Ishii's best known film world-wide must still, easily, be Gonin the surreal and memorable gangster thriller starring "Beat" Takeshi Kitano.

Gonin is worth seeking out and worthy of its own review at some point. There's a good chance you've seen it, or that it's available to you on a streaming service or film channel that occasionally shows foreign film. In the UK it pops up sporadically on Film4 late at night.

Ishii's background is extremely interesting. He started out writing racy manga and stories, before penning the scripts for a couple of "pinku" films (basically exploitation films dealing with sexual subjects). What made his work interesting, and it's still very interesting now, is that his work was intelligent and subversive, in a market where it didn't need it to be and it probably wasn't actually wanted. These films were usually excuses to see attractive naked women for an hour, but in Ishii's version of Pinku? The men are often pathetic; losers, bullies - not the suave playboys the male audience expected and would perhaps like to pretend they themselves were. The themes are dark, sometimes tragic; the sexual encounters often leading to ruin for the women involved.

Pinku was supposed to be about consequence-free male power fantasies. Ishii took the form and moulded it into something else.

His heart, now we can look back on his career, largely stayed in this sphere. The huge breakout hit of the thriller Gonin (or The Five) and it's sequel are almost unique in his filmography; films that could connect easily with an audience (and also travel beyond Japan). It's almost like Gonin was made to show people that Ishii could turn his hand to something more commercial if he wanted that. But he wasn't ever interested in chasing an audience or financial success - he was interested in men and women and sexual identity. The real basics of what drives people to be what they are.

As the years went by his films became more challenging but also, for some, more and more rewarding.

This is perhaps his most difficult and demanding film and perhaps a better place to start is with the earlier A Night in Nude - this being a loose sequel featuring the same main character. It's an easier watch and follows the traditional format of a thriller more closely. Both are remarkable films, though they function differently. 17 years passed between the first film and the sequel. Ishii continued to evolve during that time, and the way he saw the world, and people, and the stories he wanted to tell - they changed too.--------A beautiful girl hires Jiro to find an expensive watch that she has apparently lost in a forest. He doesn't believe her story but accepts the job anyway, and soon things unravel and become altogether more twisted and murderous. To complicate things even more he has attracted the interest of a persistent policewoman...

This film doesn't lean on the narrative of the first film much, but it's clearly all one emotional journey and knowledge of the first film will certainly inform your enjoyment of this one, though it isn't crucial.

The first film has a number of standout, haunting, scenes (like Jiro's pursuit of a gun or his trying to rescue a drowning woman from a sinking car) and this film also has moments that stay with you long after the film has ended.

A crying woman is objectified by the camera - she sobs while we look, lingering too long, on her naked flesh. She's a person, but she's also a sexual object. We're troubled. How are we supposed to react to this?

In what must be one of the most loaded and complex sex scenes ever seen in a film one character is, mentally, a broken child, but she's also, partly, a calculating seductress. The other character is a good man, but part of him wants to be seduced and doesn't care about anything else. They find solace in each other. Is this a good thing or a bad one? The sex itself is simple, but the drives and histories behind it are not. Perhaps a good man should act better, but he finds himself persuaded by the immediacy of flesh. The couple on screen fall into each other - our minds race.

Four characters drag bodies up a mountain in the night. Logic and self-awareness have been completely abandoned. These aren't people anymore; instead they are shadows, totally consumed by their lusts and locked into horrific behaviour.

In a scene that is almost ten minutes long a naked woman shrieks and repeatedly whips herself. It veers from being hypnotic and emotionally engaging to boring and feeling like bad performance art and then back again...

Some people, understandably, will not be able to invest themselves in much of this. Occasionally characters act and react in unlikely ways and some of the themes and depictions of sex and violence are unpleasant. But it's a film that has it's own fever-dream emotional logic, and people who can engage the film on its own terms will find it incredibly rewarding. If you believe and want film that can take you to new, interesting and challenging places then here's your proof.

The performances are uniformly fantastic. As is often the case it is Ishii's women who make the most striking impression. Hiroko Satô is the obvious standout as the tormented femme-fatale, but Shinobu Ōtake's performance is her equal as the demented harridan mother. Naoto Takenaka is as impressive here as he was in the original film. It's his performance that gives this film its heart and if he were a lesser actor the whole thing would have fallen apart. It does not - instead it soars.

This isn't a film for everyone, but some will find it to be bewilderingly intelligent, moving and truly audacious. Will Ishii return to this character again? Perhaps not, it does feel like the character has come full-circle, but I still find myself hoping that he does. I just hope he doesn't leave it 17 years again.

A Night in Nude: Salvation (2010) - audacious Japanese Neo-Noir at its finestReviews and their dates...AnnouncementLetter from the Editorchris coatesMon, 30 Jul 2018 00:16:19 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2018/7/30/reviews-and-their-dates56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5b5e57cf352f53124f84b3a2We know.

The dates for all the postings have all defaulted to before Christmas 2017.

We don't know why.

We'll change it.

At some point.

That's a picture of my leg that I hurt. Somehow.

Read the "Curtain" piece. It's new.

And it's orange.

That a movie reference/line. If you got it I'd be VERY surprised.

Just watched the Black & Chrome version of Mad Max - Fury Road, so that might be up soon.

Also, music reviews have always seemed especially popular here and I've been listening to a lot of (consults search engine) Khruangbin who are a band everyone needs in their life.

Also recording pilots for a Youtube series. But we're months away from getting that nailed down.

Rock on. Or don't. Whatever's your jam.

]]>Reviews and their dates...Review: Curtain (2015) aka - How not to market an indie movieFilmThings you should watchRandom Access MediaSun, 29 Jul 2018 23:59:40 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2018/7/30/review-curtains-2015-aka-how-not-to-market-an-indie-movie56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5b5e52e3758d46f72cfe9994...aka "The Gateway". uggghhh.

I'll explain why with this little story and then give my suspected reason as to what happened to this film. Also, know now that you may find it difficult to actually be able to see this. It may well be sat on a streaming service you have access to, depending on where you are in the world, but a quick search turned up nothing. It's a film that really has largely just disappeared - though surprisingly, seeing as it's a U.S movie, it gets/got more attention here in the UK. More of that later.

So, I'm looking for something weird and different to watch - as is often the case - and I come across this film called Curtain. Here in the UK, on free-to-air TV (I see this as a very good and actual reason to live in the UK) we have The Horror Channel. During the day it shows re-runs of Buffy and Xena and old Sci-Fi channel movies. After 9pm you can expect a few things like the Wrong Turn series, or The Hills Have Eyes remakes; pretty well-known, recent, slasher flicks. And then before the channel goes into Shopping TV mode you'll get a couple of weird low-budget things that won't get much of an audience and are there to pad out the schedule. Of course I go looking for these things, they get recorded, they sit on my DVR for a while and eventually I get round to looking at them. This is the actual TV listing.

CurtainHORROR CHANNEL, SAT 30 JUN, 3.00AM TO 4.29AMQuirky horror. A nurse moves to a new apartment and discovers a portal in the bathroom that is swallowing household objects and brings terror into her life. (2015)

Frankly, if I see a description like that for a film I'm going to be ALL OVER IT.

There's some misinformation here, but also something that is very very correct. It IS quirky. It's weird, bizarre, and funny in different ways. Which brings us to the important wrong information. This portal isn't "swallowing household objects" which sounds like it has some far-reaching power and is innately terrifying. No, this portal is located in the bathroom - specifically above the bath/shower. And the only thing it swallows? Shower curtains. And only when the bathroom door is shut and it's alone. See, weird. And already kind of funny. Also, the main character USED to be a nurse. She had a breakdown, is unemployed, and drinks beer constantly to take the edge off. She's also not terrified by the disappearing objects, more just pissed off. Some terror comes later on.

It's a film that is actually working on a number of levels. Not that there isn't horror, but that comes later in the film as do a bunch of other things; I've described "Curtain" as a film that has aspects of horror in it, rather than it being a horror film. That's the distinction to me. For every moment that's horror there's something that makes you smile, or is weird and gets your imagination working. It's not a horror film.

So the premise is so damn weird and specific that it can't help but make you smile. Which is kind of the point. "Curtain" is the right title for this thing. It weird, indie lo-fi and doing it's own thing.

I'll tell you what I think happened to this film, which I understand, but also crippled it. It's really well-made. It got picked up by someone who really liked it, but then it came to trying to market it and this film isn't going to play well to a crowd. For every person who really likes it, they'll be one who actually hates it. MOST people will just be left wondering what the hell they just watched. It's got a very specific audience. I don't know how you go about actually finding that audience. And neither did the distribution company. Instead of it being pitched to the art-house crowd, where it belonged, it was pitched as all-out horror film.

This takes me back to my little story. I watch the film. It's intelligent, well-made and has a clear sense of its' own identity. So I tell some people about it and I want them to get a sense of it so I search for the trailer, which I had not seen before, and I play it on their TV. And the trailer screams in your face for a whole minute like it's going to kill you and mostly uses a bunch of out of context footage from the second-half of film (things that the potential audience shouldn't be aware of) to tell you it's sinister and born of hell. I'm dumbfounded. So nuance is gone, the idea that you're going to watch something thoughtful and crafted is gone. The original title "Curtain" is gone and now it's "The Gateway", because obviously that's terrifying and not generic and characterless at all. It also premiered at the UK's annual Film4 Frightfest horror movie festival, and this must have led to some distribution deal, as their livery appears in the credits to the film and trailer. So once that happened, once it got some attention in that environment, someone in marketing must have thought that it made sense to present the film in a certain way.

"Oh, look. It now looks like generic, awful, horror crap and is completely misleading! Good work guys! Take the rest of the day off! Beer's on me! "

Nothing looking remotely like this happens in the film.

The problem here is that you've just fucked two audiences. People who want a weird intelligent genre-flirting indie film will think this is some one-note supernatural gore-fest. People who want a supernatural gore-fest find themselves with a film about an ex-nurse whose shower curtains keep being stolen by a, very-particlar, worm-hole.

So, lets go back in time to me starting to watch the film, and that TV listing is all I know going in. Which I'm now glad about. I'm also glad it was called "Curtain"; it made me interested. It feels like I've watched ten films called The Gateway and they were all cheap shit made by some clueless 20yr olds with a camcorder and I would have just blew by it. This bollocks happens all the time. A few years ago there was a great little distopian sci-fi flick about a young woman protecting her water supply called "The Well". It got retitled "The Last Survivors" and immediately sounded like most no-budget SF films that you want avoid like the plague. The impressive, then unknown, star seems to be doing alright though. Haley Lu Richardson. If you're a fan of no-budget films made by people with lots of talent (I am. Lack of budget can lead to inventiveness) I suggest you go take a look at that, you might like it.

Anyhow the film starts and the first logo to pop up? "Icon", an actual proper film company, which surprised the hell out of me - so this film actually had a little bit of funding or at least the promise of a proper distribution at some point. Still, the first few minutes are pretty low-fi, it's obviously a small production and it's shot on digital. But it's really nicely shot. Someone knows how to properly frame things and has an idea of what works on digital and what doesn't. This prelude to the film proper feels like early Cronenburg. It's weird and feels off-kilter and alien and gets a little grisly.

And then the film properly starts. Our ex-nurse is looking for things to fill her life with - decorating, beer and trying to convince people on the street to help Save the Whales are the main things. And then dealing with the shower curtain situation. Once she becomes convinced she isn't going crazy or that someone isn't creeping in and stealing them she knows shes dealing with something else. She replaces a curtain, it goes missing. Does it again, it goes missing. Some people would get scared but she just gets really pissed off. She storms off to the store and buys many shower curtains; on the bus home she sits there hugging them all to her chest and she's just SEETHING, like she's going to war with something. It's so ridiculous and so perfectly presented that it's laugh out loud funny.

Our heroine stares down her nemesis. A curtain rail.

The curtains only disappear when no one is in the room and the door is shut, so she leaves her phone in the bathroom recording video and closes the door. We find out how they disappear. I liked it a lot.

Then she and her friend want to know where these things are going, so they paint "If you find this please call..." and put their telephone number on the next curtain, wondering if these things actually go somewhere and if they're ever found.

And the phone does, indeed, ring.

The trailer is wrong-headed in every way, but one of its' worst crimes is using footage from the second half of the film. This ruins things for the audience, they've seen things they shouldn't have seen and they're now aware of, and waiting for, things that should suprise them. Likewise, me going further into the plot of "Curtain" (I'm not calling it the other thing) would spoil things for you.

The director/writer, Jaron Henrie-McCrea, works in film in various capacities. He has an earlier film, a comedy thriller, called Pervertigo (2012) which sounds interesting and was well-reviewed but is even more elusive than this one. The lead, Danni Smith, has no other film credits to her name though she seems to have a solid background in musical theatre. She's superb, and carries the film mostly on her own. She needs to be in more films. Indeed despite the low-budget the acting is all pretty top-notch. When you're working on a budget then take time over the things you can control. The script, the casting, rehersals, planning shots and scenes meticulously. This film does all that.

It got screwed by bad marketing, but it's so odd I have to admit I don't know how you'd actually properly promote it. But I know what I WOULDN'T do. What they actually did.

Starburst - "...(it) was always going to be one of the year's most original horror films. Thankfully, it also turns out to be one of the best."

Anton Bitel, Sight and Sound - "Charming and weird enough to get away with its rough edges, it can along the way seem a bit meandering, especially in its focus on Tim's Save the Whales fixation, but in the end every (narrative) hook on this Curtain fits neatly into place."

Think you actually missed the point of the whole Save the Whales thing, Tim, but at least you liked the film.

Watch it. You might not like it, but you'll appreciate how very well-made it is. And one or two of you will love it.

Review: Curtain (2015) aka - How not to market an indie movieReview: Ghost in the Shell - AriseTVRandom Access MediaMon, 18 Dec 2017 16:01:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/4/7/review-ghost-in-the-shell-arise56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5705c24ef699bb254be22f63If you were to mention Anime films to someone who generally doesn't follow these things but who perhaps knows a couple of titles you're most likely to hear them mention a Studio Ghibli film, maybe Akira if they like SF films, and then maybe Ghost in the Shell.

The original film (released in 1995) was a huge hit all over the world for an anime film and directed by visionary director Mamoru Oshii, who also directed the lesser-known, and belated, sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence(2004).

It's a franchise with a long (and possibly confusing, to someone coming new to this) history to it. Originally, a manga (comic) it was adapted into the movie, which got a belated sequel. The original even got a reworking (not just a restoration job - whole scenes being re-rendered in new graphics; some of the CG used now looking pretty dated - kind of like George Lucas and the Star Wars movies) which was given a slightly different name.

Then came the TV adaption, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002-2005). This used the same characters, designs and environments but is not a sequel to the films - or even acknowledging the events of the films - and operates completely separately. The TV show (GITS:SAC, as it's often referred to for short) ran for two seasons - both of which were then edited down and released as separate films. The TV show then received it's own movie sequel.

There have been a number of videogames based on the franchise, including a new one one based on this version of the franchise.

Arise was originally released as a series of four films, which, after receiving short cinema releases were put out on DVD and Blu-Ray. The films were then edited down into episodes that were shown on television and two new episodes later produced, "Pyrophoric Cult" - designed as a lead-in to the new film, "Ghost in the Shell - The New Movie".

For the purposes of this review I watched the four original films, rather than the re-cut TV versions.

No knowledge of this universe is required. Those who are fans will find plenty to enjoy in the little differences here and there, but it's intended to be completely self-contained, and is.

All versions of the story are at heart the same, with the same world, characters and same basic drives behind them. The phrase "The Ghost in the Shell" refers to the human intelligence that resides within a heavily augmented body. Augments are very common in this world. Perhaps someone just has an implant so they can surf the net and make phone-calls with their mind; someone in the army might have dermal armour and cybernetic limbs that allows them to move and kill with great speed. Technology, and the way all this can be exploited, is moving so fast that a dedicated task-force is needed in order to respond to these things.

Exploding android suicide attack children.

A department called Section 9 is just the place. It has an almost unlimited budget, due to their not only regularly having to fight terrorist threats, but also attacks by other various governments and institutions. The Section is run by Major Motoko Kusanagi and she runs a small, hand-picked team, ably assisted by a group of Tachikoma (thinking tanks) who are rather child-like in their thought-processes (and have been purposely kept that way) but are capable of learning.

The previous TV show, benefiting from more episodes, would cut between standalone short-stories and others that dealt with a main overarching story. This show is primarily concerned with just the one main story.

If anything this version of the tale is something of a prequel. The version of the main character made famous in the films and then reconfigured in the TV show is older, and more overtly sexual. This version is, very purposely, much younger in appearance and almost asexual (though peculiarly some of the advertising around this new show echoes the sexualised imagery from the earlier works, despite it's absence from the anime itself).

The unit that the main characters work for in the film and show does not even exist yet. But the pieces do. The characters are there and brought under Motoko's command and the Tachikoma sit in the garage used as basic security vehicles (until Motoko unthinkingly gives them the ability to talk, which leads to them conversing all the time, constantly asking questions and becoming more like the Tachikoma we maybe already know and love).

Motoko, her cool bike and one of the Tachikoma.

This Motoko Kusanagi also has a different backstory. She lives within a completely artificial body and she is owned, or rather her body is owned, by a shadowy government outfit who deal with black-ops. While body augmentations are very common, whole-body ones are not, and the technology in Motoko represents a leap way beyond anything or anyone else.

How she found herself in this body and attached to this group, whom she severely dislikes, reveals itself slowly over the course of the films.

She is sequestered from this group to help Chief of Public Security, Daisuke Aramaki. Something strange is happening - augmented people are being hacked, much like a computers are hacked. People in important positions and information, people who trigger terrorist events - their memories overwritten by a virus. The source? A mystery, but the name of the person behind it - Firestarter. And he wants to create a new world. What exactly that means? Another mystery. Not only that, there are people, organisations and governments buying the virus from him and using it for their own means. Who can you trust?

I know and love the original TV series. This is different in some respects, but I find as much to enjoy here as I did with the originals. The changes to the central character are very intelligent and represent a moving with the times. It's also fascinating to see these people before they know each other and before they're established as the force they will become. Surely the next season will have a fair number of new differences to help keep the show fresh and while this is quite a modest re-invention in many ways, that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.

It's also a pleasure to see the old sense of humour hasn't disappeared. Batou (the unit's wise-cracking "heavy") early-on objects to taking orders from the Major, who he just sees as being an unqualified, little, young woman (I like this version of the Major as much as the old one). At her invitation, he attacks her a number of times to see who might be more proficient in combat and - well, things don't go too well for him. Over and over.

The show was originally conceived as four films. I have not watched the edited TV versions, but have read that the four original films are the superior watch. After that there is an episode that was produced separately, called "Pyrophoric Cult" which serves as an introduction to the film; Ghost in the Shell - The New Movie.

The animation is top-notch as is the voice-acting. All of this represents a rare mixture of intelligent science-fiction, action and even philosophy which is something to value.

It's well worth watching.

8/10

Chris Coates

]]>Review: Ghost in the Shell - AriseHow did they not take over The World? The sublime synth-pop of New Young Pony Club.MusicRandom Access MediaMon, 18 Dec 2017 15:59:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/4/7/how-did-they-not-take-over-the-world-new-young-pony-club56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:57060e3986db436541bb861dSometimes it's not how good you are, or what you do or who you know. Sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was hard to believe I was in the wrong place and time that Friday night. Above a pub, I think in Hoxton (I know, I know), was an OK sound-system in a very small room. How many people? 100? Maybe a few more. The briefest of sound-checks and we're off and running and I was expecting the sound quality to be awful - I was mostly expecting not to be able to hear the pocket-sized front-woman Tahita Bulmer; drowned out by the girl-drummer (Scott Pilgrim reference, high-five), tall synth-player who looked like a henchman from a Bond film, permanently smirking but gorgeous keyboardist, and a bassist with an especially fine mustache and ever-present, irrepressible, grin.

Then she started singing. Some bands, for some reason, never sound as good on recordings as they do live, and some singers who only ever sound really good on recordings sound fucking amazing live. And she was one of those.

Music video by New Young Pony Club performing Ice Cream. (C) 2006 Modular Recordings under exclusive license to Universal Music Australia Pty Limited

Not just born to sing, but an incredible front-woman. Mesmeric and effortless. Immediately at one with the music and a magnetic focal-point for the audience. She was something else.

Shitty quality and not even in the right ratio, that video above. Proof, if proof be needed, that they hit the scene far too early. But still, if you want an example of how to do an unabashed blinder of an electro-pop song - here it fucking is. It's glorious.

The highest that tune ever got was No.40 in the UK charts. And that was a re-release.

Maybe they were one-hit wonders and didn't have enough decent tunes to generate enough attention?

Music video by New Young Pony Club performing The Bomb. (C) 2006 Modular Recordings under exclusive license to Universal Music Australia Pty Limited

There's more. Get Lucky, The Get Go. The album was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Music Prize. I mean, for fuck's sake.

Bands do sometimes decide to take off in different directions between albums. Was the one NYPC took next inspired by the lack of chart success or artistically did they want to develop and try something new? The follow-up album "The Architect" was certainly more sophisticated and more polished in it's production, but it's not much fun.

I can't help but feel that if they'd appeared a year or two later then things would have been different - that whole electro-pop thing was properly in full swing by then. Or maybe the problem was that they were too advanced for the pop-chart kids and they were too pop for the older crowd. I don't know. A year or two later would have made it easier to connect with an audience on the internet; that whole thing got much more advanced pretty quickly.

They still make music. The two main members, and writers, and the original drummer (who also drums for some of the coolest bands around) are still together and still make music. Their last album got an OK review in The Guardian. The keyboardist wasn't exactly a great loss and released some truly awful music on her own, as did the original bassist.

So, they're still going and experiencing some measure of success. But if you'd seen them back in the day, in a small venue where you could have reached out and touched them, you'd have sworn they were going to take over the world.

Jack Ince

]]>How did they not take over The World? The sublime synth-pop of New Young Pony Club.Review: Classic Album: Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92MusicClassic AlbumRandom Access MediaSat, 16 Dec 2017 10:22:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/4/4/classic-album-aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-85-9256d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5701ecd98a65e235846c4c7fIt's funny how the mind can play tricks on you. It's funny that this particular, apparent mis-remembrance, should concern this particular musician.

Misinformation traditionally swirled around Richard D. James like water exits a bathtub sink-hole. Stories abounded and you didn't know what to believe. In the early days of the internet if someone didn't want to be pinned down they could be what they wanted to be, largely disappear - and they could also be what other people wanted them to be.

He did own a tank. He didn't live on a roundabout in London. I believe him when he once said he often went several days without sleep while working on music. Early interview videos show a young man uncomfortable with being the center of attention and often unwilling to make eye-contact while still talking at length and often using long words and attempting to explain complicated concepts that are clearly over the head of the interviewer. I wonder if he is, to some extent, autistic (not a disability, it's a condition that has little detrimental effect on many who have it). It would explain the drive to create to the exclusion of everything else, obsession with detail, the behavioral ticks, the different way of looking at the world. There is autism in my family and I recognise the signs. There was a recent theory published that suggested autistics were often, down through history, responsible for many of the great discoveries and leaps in thinking that helped civilization evolve.

Conjecture. Totally.

Aphex Twin - Heliosphan. Sound of the future.

He was famously pretty choosy about when and how he did interviews - sometimes with rather obscure publications. Occasionally he'd do an interview with NME or something, but he was just as likely to do one for some photocopied fanzine that only sold in two music shops in Morecombe or something (a year or two ago I found something like this and it was one of the most enlightening interviews I've read with him - the interviewer, years later, scanned it and made it available for everyone online. If I find it I'll update this article with it). Replies to questions on film and in print could often be curt or downright rude.

Anyhow, back to my memory that I could have sworn was true, but can find no evidence of now. It's always, for years, been a "fact" to me that this album wasn't an album at all and was something James himself was unhappy with. Instead it was a bunch of tracks slapped together and released in order to satisfy a contract agreement with the Belgian label he was then signed to. I can find no evidence of this now, though as soon as this album was released James set up his own label, Replex.

This story never sat quite right with me, though, as not only is the quality of the music, of course, so refined and imaginative, but each track sits so well together - it feels like a work that has been meticulously arranged. It's not some random "greatest hits" package as I'd somehow come to think of it (and yet thought deeply weird).

A few years ago you could visit Reflex's website (the most sparse commercial website I've ever seen) and order copies of his old, seminal, Analogue Bubblebath Ep's. I did. They arrived in clear plastic CD-cases with a sticker featuring sparse information slapped on the front telling you what it was. The name of the EP and composer etched, tiny, around the hole in the middle of the CD.

We met once. That's overstating things. I was in London with a group of schoolmates to see some play as part of a History field-trip and this rather intense looking man was sat opposite me on the Tube. He was reading a book. There was something quite mesmerizing about him and I was deeply curious as to what he was reading. Obviously, he felt my eyes on him and his head snapped up and he stared right at me until I looked away. He went back to his book. We happened to get off at the same stop and he took off in the opposite direction to where we were going. It was only while we stood around outside the theatre that I thought I realised who it might have been. Same hair, exact same facial features, same build. I had a friend who happened to be there and was also into Aphex Twin. I mentioned who I thought I'd just seen and how I wished I'd said something; shown some appreciation for his work.

"It's good you didn't", my friend said. "He's famous for hating people who come up to him and try talking to him". Real? Another story in the legend that is Richard D. James? Who knows.

Some time later I was looking up the address of Reflex's offices (I was actually considering sending a demo in - ugh) and I realised that Tube stop was the nearest one to the office. I like to think it was him.

So, why yet another review of this album? Because there are always people who haven'tfound it yet. Because it means so much to me. Because I was around and responding to it at the very time it came out, an experience that at least gives me a different outlook on what this music is, was and will be seen as going forward. I'm able to put this album in a different context to some intern at a music magazine who just listened to it for the first time. Not a better, superior, context, but...

More personal? And that's something Richard D. James' music seems to inspire in people - particularly the earlier, more listenable, stuff - people seem to latch onto it and treasure it in ways that is rare.

Beautiful.

It hasn't dated. At all. Even something like Ptolemy which starts with and occasionally persists with claps, kicks and snares that sound like they were just sampled directly from a Roland 808 fail to age the music. That growling bass synth and the floating medative, beautific, melody lends the tune a futuristic air. It feels like you're in a nightclub years from now and the DJ has just decided to throw in a few old-school sounds just to mix things up a bit.

Heliosphan and Ageispolis, featured here, are my very favourite tunes on the album. They summarise everything that it great about this album - how it sounds like nothing else, like it's randomly been dropped in from the deep future. It takes me places, creates environments, makes me want to go to wherever this music has come from. And yet there are elements of danger here, too. The likes of Tha and Hedphelym stray into the types of industrial soundscapes found in Richard D. James' next album, Surfing on Sine Waves (released under the name Polygon Window) - an album I bought after hearing two tracks from it one night on the John Peel Radio Show. I didn't even know it was by Richard D. James. It was the first album of his I bought - Warp Records, largely James' home by now and going forward - didn't yet mean anything to me.

The nearest thing we have to an actual contemporary to James from around this time is actually a one-time collaborator of his - Tom Middleton. His ambient album 76:14was, and still is, seen by many as a classic, but it hasn't, in this reviewers' opinion, stood the test of time as well. Coming 2 years later than Selected Ambient Works it lacks the invention of the earlier work. According to Wikipedia Mixmag ranked 76:14 at number 11 in it's "Best Dance Albums of All Time". It's a weird fucking list. I wonder if the writer would still stand by it. And it's actually less of a dance album than S.A.W (Pulsewidth and Delphium are pure futuristic electro-funk).

This track 14:31 is still a beautiful one, but here the reliance on standard synth samples mean that the track occasionally shows its age. Other tracks on the album are even more guilty of this.

It's impossible to say, but would we have this tune - in this form - if it hadn't been for Aphex's earlier work? Who's to say. But the name "Global Communication" and jet-plane samples don't do it any favours - all these years on and it seems like a product of it's time. At the same time James' non-reliance on standard sampling, or - when he did it - the purposely blatant nature of it, means that it hasn't aged the music in the same way. He was, and the music still is, miles ahead of the competition.

It always seemed odd to me that James dropped ambient music so abruptly after Volume 2. It turns out he didn't. Recently an absolute mass of it has seemingly hit the internet, semi-clandestinely and apparently by the man himself. It's a puzzle, and a shame that such music be unheard for so long. But if you were to change the strange actions of this supremely gifted man you wouldn't have the same individual who made it in the first place.

Shinya Tsukamoto has made at least two films that can be considered minor classics (one of them is worthy of its' own review at another time). Often quite unlike anything you've seen before; intelligent, challenging and demanding - a number of his films should have won festival awards and been championed by art-house cinemas the world over - and there was a smattering of that - but they, and he, never got the attention he truly deserves.

The reason? He makes films that the average person would just not be able to sit through; too demanding, too weird - he makes films that are hard to watch. Which is a good thing. Its good that some films make you feel like you've just been in a fist-fight; good to be reminded of everything the medium is capable of.

He's a god-send if you think you've seen everything cinema has to offer. Endless invention, excitement, actual emotion.

He's not alone in plowing this industrial/cyberpunk aesthetic (and it's only one string to his bow - his films cover many topics and looks) - his contemporary Shozin Fukui is where film enthusiasts go when they consider Shinya Tsukamoto's cyberpunk/industrial/body horror too mainstream. But Shozin Fukui is also an article for another time.

Yes, that's what we're dealing with here.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) was compared, favourably, to the famous and hugely influencial anime Akira that had released to cinemas the year earlier (previously a manga - comic book - that Tsukamoto will certainly have been aware of) and David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) (post-industrial imagery, grainy black and white visual, stop motion photography, mutations and more). While there are a number of shared themes and influences clearly, though, Tsukamoto is his own man - there are an absolute mass of themes and imagery that run through each of the three films - and he's here primarily to deal with these, not anything else.

Tetsuo opens with a character, or a version of a character, that appears in all three films (this man or "The Metal Fetishist" is always played by Tsukamoto himself). Obsessed with enhancing his body with metal and evolving into another level of human he's hit by a car driven by a salaryman (an office worker who often works so hard as to neglect everything else, such as family) and his girlfriend is in the passenger seat (Tomorowo Taguchi and Kei Fujiwara) - they don't want trouble, think he's close to death, and decide to dump the body out in the countryside.

They dump the body and, sexually aroused at the extreme nature of taking a life, they have sex against a nearby tree. At some point they become aware that he is, just, still alive. They comment on it, but continue, and it's assumed that they then eventually leave him there to die.

He has not died. Instead (and the theme of women and what they symbolise in these films is something we'll get to) he repairs himself - somehow - and then mutates a normal woman, making her into a possessed cybernetic would-be assassin, travelling by train who happens to be sat near the salaryman. A pursuit and attack then follow - making use of stop-motion photography down suburb streets. The salaryman finally manages to kill her when his own body starts to mutate in order to fight off the threat - more metal, more power - and kills her.

After a deeply disturbing dream where his girlfriend has morphed into a metal tentacled creature and raped him The Salaryman mutates further. A giant drill-penis appears at his crotch. She fights him off, even plunging knives into the still exposed skin that is left, but ends up impaled and dead on the power drill.

Later The Fetishist attacks again, this time by plugging himself into the metal that runs through the Salaryman's apartment building and finally emerging from the shell of the dead girlfriend. After another pursuit and fight the two characters end up merging into one gigantic machine - somewhere between a tank and tower of metal. They agree that they need to turn the whole world to metal, and they strike out into the world to make this happen.

The model-work is breathtaking in its invention and complexity. And Tsukamoto had a budget of...what? Next to nothing. It boggles the mind.

Clearly, while this is a story that makes sense within itself - in its own world - you can park your ideas about traditional narrative at the door.

The film was a big-hit, as art-house films go. People hadn't seen anything like it. There is an easy comparison here (though less extreme). Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981) played to audiences looking for something different, was somewhat raw in its presentation, filmed in black and white and then, after that earlier success and new access to bigger budgets, essentially remade bigger and in colour.

Which brings us to Tetsuo II.

Tetsuo II: Body Hammer shares its post-industrial/body horror themes with the earlier film, but is by far the most cyberpunk influenced of the three films. Cyberpunk does not just concern the evolution of man into machine, but also shared information, linked minds sharing information (I'm reminded of the linked-mind cult of Neal Stevenson's novel The Diamond Age - though this group lack direct linked-conscious and instead, for the moment, rely on a deeply held and shared belief system), and there's a certain aesthetic (trench-coats, shades, partially shaved heads, banks of monitor screens, often water in various forms) that is here is spades where it is less so in the other two films. Cyberpunk also, narratively, often treads themes and tells its stories in the style of noir thrillers (see the grand-daddy of them all, the novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, the ending the most noir thing I've ever read).

Where Lynch's Eraserhead is an obvious influence/companion piece to the first film, Blade Runner is perhaps as much an influence here. And Blade Runner is noir as all hell. Rain, trench-coats, detectives, double-crosses, beautiful dames; it's got the lot.

The imagery here is endlessly inventive, with a handful of tremendously constructed scenes.

Picked at random in a shopping centre Taniguchi, there with his wife and young son, is assaulted by two men and seemingly injected by a strange-looking device with some unknown substance. The men kidnap the son and run off with him, Taniguchi and his wife in pursuit. Eventually they track the men to the roof. Initially led to believe that his son has been thrown from the roof, he and his wife find this not to be the case. Taniguchi is physically attacked again, but allowed to live and the mysterious men leave.

He's the target of an extreme, quasi-religious, cult - obsessed with evolving into the next version of mankind; one who is as much machine as human. They have a scientist researching how this might be brought about, and they needed a test-subject. The Metal Fetishist from the earlier film is among their number.

Again, the family is attacked and the son kidnapped and we find ourselves on another skyscraper roof. Enraged at being toyed with and being helpless, something snaps in Taniguchi and his body mutates in a way to help him deal with the situation. His arm mutates, painfully, into a cannon. The villain holds the child up and Taniguchi takes a shot, enraged - driven by anger. He wasn't able to see clearly or control his shot. He has just blown his son to pieces.

After the mutation is considered a success every member of the cult is given a shot of the formula.

There's a twist in Tetsuo II that I won't discuss here, but it deals with how much power, destruction and mutation an individual is capable of is a result of how much hate, and the will to destroy, is already in a person. A major-plot point seems to be a very unlikely, random, coincidence - but in reality it is anything but. Fate is at play here. People, evolution, shared histories - they are all connected and unavoidable. The world is only going one way. The ending is everything Tsukamoto would have wanted for the end of his first film, but now he has the budget to do it. It really is something.

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (sometimes just called "The Bullet Man") is, weirdly, in English. I can only assume that in order to secure a larger budget this was how Tsukamoto got the financing he needed. It stands on its own as a film, and being in colour (just about) and in English would have made it easier to sell to foreign audiences - at least that's what I'm sure he told his financiers. All that matters is that Tsukamoto got the budget to take Tetsuo where he obviously always wanted to.

The first time I saw it, a few years ago now, I was disappointed. The English being spoken by actors to whom it is a second language is a hindrance; especially when, say, having to act upset and also whisper their lines. It's not the deal-breaker it could have been though - moments like this are not too regular, and dialogue largely taking a backseat anyhow; this is primarily a physical, visceral experience. And the things like barely heard speech somehow don't end up being a hindrance - they add to the insane other-worldliness of the thing. This isn't a film like other films; it's going to behave the way it wants to behave, you can park your usual expectations at the door. Again.

The pieces of Tetsuo II largely appear again in The Bullet Man. The inspired editing and visual invention aren't as heavily present as in the earlier films, but the themes are visual cues are largely the same.

Sex has been a re-occuring theme in all three films. A scene featuring a man making love to a woman against a tree is in each film, presented as a traumatic event for the person observing. The monster the main character becomes in the second film is largely due to his witnessing a violent sexual situation as a young child. Women are intensely desirable, but also something to be feared - the harridan mutation from The Iron Man, the mother - and what she represents - in Body Hammer. But both of the last two films also present women as salvation; the only thing that can possibly bring our monsters back.

There are a mass of similarities and references through-out all three films. The Fetishist, always at some point, wears a black t-shirt with a white cross on it - like he's making himself a target; which he is. In the first two films he possesses some mutation powers, but he wants more - from the protagonist - and he's literally put a target on himself, hoping for a merging with the main character and therefore more metal and more power. In the third film he has no power but hopes to gain it, again from the main character.

Each film features a car hitting a person, which in turn leads to anger and mutation. For instance, in The Iron Man it's The Fetishist himself who is hit by a car, then dumped in the woods. In The Bullet Man the Fetishist has no powers - but he's learnt of the mutation experiments on children, and, wanting to provoke such a reaction in the main character who is now an adult (and in turn be evolved himself) he kills the mans' son by hitting him with a car.

There is always, early on in each film, the line "I've been feeling very strange since..." but which never resolves.

There are more like how the main character always looks and dresses exactly the same.

These films are not for everybody. I'll go further; these films are not for most people. Tetsuo II - Body Hammer is by far the most accessible and most likely to be enjoyed by someone unfamiliar with these sort of films. Seeing as the films lack an on-going story I'd suggest most people watch this one first, and then go to the first film if they enjoy the experience. It's like The Evil Dead - if you were trying to get someone to watch one of the Evil Dead films then you'd choose to show them Evil Dead 2. It's the same story, in colour, more polished and easier to engage with; and it's the same here.

As for which is the best of the three films - the first has incredible energy, a raw punk energy and is highly experimental and inventive in a way that's quite unlike anything else. The second film is more polished and occasionally actually beautiful, but no less inventive and I personally love the more overt cyberpunk stylings and story. The third is the inferior film, but look at what its inferior to; its still highly enjoyable.

The Iron Man and Body Hammer are impossible to compare, for me. They're the same, but oh so different. But if you're watching them for the first time, watch Body Hammer first.

Trying to watch The Iron Man unprepared might make you want to escape to the hills - a confused gibbering mess of a human being.

Chris Coates

]]>Review: The Tetsuo trilogy (1989-2009) - Cyberpunk body-horror made in heavenAm i ridiculous for just sticking with Steam?GamesCultureRandom Access MediaFri, 15 Dec 2017 18:00:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2017/12/15/sticking-with-steam56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5744a6fc27d4bdc94b4678a6I do most of my gaming sprawled on my sofa with a joypad in my hands. If I was still into multiplayer FPS’s I'd be crouched over the computer desk with mouse and keyboard and there would perhaps be a different dynamic to not just the way I played the games but the way I thought about the platforms PC games now come attached to.

Steam is where my huge library of games are, all my gaming friends, and multiple social groups that just don't exist anywhere else. It's also the biggest store for games; so if I suddenly feel like playing a game from ten years ago then the journey from searching, purchasing, downloading, and then playing the thing is seamless. The Steam ecosystem is just so slick in its Big Picture form. I see it as a console replacement - I hold one button down on the pad and I have every aspect of gaming immediately there and accessible. Sure, I got the mouse and keyboard sat nearby for chats and whatever but it's a very small part of my interaction with Steam now.

I still find the Steam Big Picture launch screen snazzy as heck.

I haven't tried Origin properly for a few years. I didn't like the experience; the layout was pedestrian, there were far fewer titles, the ecosystem that revolves around gaming isn't there like on Steam. I'm sure some things have improved. One of the draws of the Origin platform is that it has a handful of games you can't get elsewhere on PC. The most dickish move EA ever pulled was offering the first two Mass Effect games on Steam and then keeping the last one an Origin exclusive. By offering the first two on Steam the natural assumption of Steam gamers was that the third would eventually arrive there too. Instead it never arrived; a deeply, pretty unbelievable, cynical scam to drive traffic to their own platform. Many people will have invested in the two original titles with the understandable expectation of the third arriving. They were manipulated, defrauded. I'm surprised there wasn't a court-case.

Part of the desperate desire to build their user base leads them to occasionally sell these games at incredibly low prices - they've previously sold the Mass Effect trilogy at a price-point where it's practically been free. Titanfall, both the game and season pass (same thing with Destiny), were being offered at obscenely low prices not long after release. Obviously it was a big push for new users - hey, come play the latest thing around for hardly any money! - but it came so soon after the original releases that it just smacked of desperation. It makes you wonder how much Origin costs to run - is it self supporting, or is it being propped up by the rest of the company? They can certainly do that longterm in the hope that it eventually starts paying for itself, if that's the case.

And this is how you interact with Origin. Balls to that.

The Mass Effect trick/marketing strategy had a real effect on me that, coupled with other distasteful behaviours of theirs in the past, led me to pretty-much boycott their output. If there's a game of theirs I really want to play it has to be available for Steam and cheap as hell and preferably from a third party seller so EA get as little of my money as possible. It's not a big deal to me - I'm lucky enough to be sat on a bunch of AAA titles I seem to be magically collecting somehow, unplayed. I can wait for things. The thing that provoked this article was a recent deal by the other, smallest of the big players in this field, Ubisoft. Six decent titles, including Far Cry 3, for $5. That's a great deal - of course locked to their UPlay platform. Ubisoft usually go with a different tactic - make things available on Steam so they're still making money there but at a higher price, but often drop their prices insanely low over on UPlay. I find this less despicable - I'm still being given free choice, even if might end with me paying out more than necessary.

The problem for the couch-gamer is this; if I'm playing all these exclusives on three PC gaming platforms am i expected to have all three programs open all the time just incase, sometime, on one of them, someone wants a game or a conversation. My pad triggers Steam with one button push; to use it with Origin or UPlay? I've got to uncouple my controller from Steam and then link to something else. It's a pain in the ass. And i'm not doing it. By all means charge more for your titles on Steam, but at least have them there. Not doing so? It really pisses gamers off, and they'll stop buying your products.

Ugh, what even is this? A PS Vita menu screen?

If you're still still into your precision FPS experiences then you need to be crouched over your PC, and having a bunch of different platforms open at the same time might not be a big deal , but for those who like to kick back while we game there is only one choice. Valve is a titan, hoovering up cash in a variety of ways; some I'm not entirely comfortable with - the amount of Steam Tax charged on sold goods, the cut they take off developers big and small. But at the same time they're great at encouraging and helping develop new indie games and the user experience is just so incredibly polished; I feel like that's almost something worth paying for (which, of course we are in a variety of ways) . The presentation and usability of the consoles and other PC platforms look positively amateurish in comparison.

Ahh, my beautiful beautiful Steam Big Picture

So there aren't any other options. I want to press a button and be able play all my games instantly. And the competition is a mess, desperately hanging onto a handful of exclusives, with no comparible user bases. EA will keep persevering with Origin. Ubisoft too can subsidise their online gaming through UPlay due to their game sales, but the console and Steam user base continue to grow and longterm I wonder if either of the other two will last, given their limited content. Gaming is moving more and more to the Big Screen - literally and figuratively. And Origin and UPlay just can't compete there at all.

I think I just answered my own question.

Michael Coates.

]]>Am i ridiculous for just sticking with Steam?Listen to this: The Kings of Leon and an unexpected and extraordinary cover versionMusicRandom Access MediaThu, 14 Dec 2017 17:00:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/5/10/the-kings-of-leon-and-an-unexpected-and-extraordinary-cover-version56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5731d3d12fe131e30c46ca28So, yet another case of a great American band being huge in the UK for a few years before the U.S finally realises too and says "hey, these guys are pretty good". You people.

Not that I knew this - I literally just found out. When Kings of Leon broke in the UK they broke huge, and I just assumed that was the case everywhere.

So, they were massive in the UK for a couple of years and toured Europe extensively and that perhaps explains how this came about.

Now, we've visited Robyn before (in an earlier review). Maybe they met at a festival somewhere, maybe they just randomly heard the tune and loved it. But what a cover. Another complex, foot stomping, glorious pop classic by one of the most extraordinary popular musicians around (though somehow not as successful as she should be) and they made it their own. Below - the original. Neither is best, both are uniquely amazing. Crank the volume up.

Kings of Leon cover Robyn's Dancing On My Own in the Live Lounge for BBC Radio 1.

I kind of wish Caleb had remembered he needed to sing the first couple of lines into the microphone, but I love the fact they don't change the lyrics to reflect it's now a man singing the song ("Im in the corner/watching you kiss her") - many would have done. That's respect for another persons' work. I dig that.

If anything this cover is more maudlin than the original, but it still rocks and pulls heartstrings in ways you just don't expect.

Good work.

Jack Ince

]]>Listen to this: The Kings of Leon and an unexpected and extraordinary cover versionReview: Now that the dust's settled, just how good actually is Metal Gear Solid 5?GamesOnce the dust has settledRandom Access MediaThu, 14 Dec 2017 09:56:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/4/7/review-now-that-the-dusts-settled-how-good-actually-is-metal-gear-solid-556d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5705a37d2b8dde219f5ec88eWhen MGS 2 and 3 were graphically spruced up and re-released for the Xbox 360 I bought it pretty-much day of release. I remembered my PS2 days - the sneaking, the monitoring of enemy patrols and the effortless taking out a succession of enemy combatants in the smallest of time-frames.The memories came flooding back - the intro movie; the driving rain, the bridge, dropping onto the ship passing below. It all looked and felt amazing. And then the game started.

Suddenly, other memories long forgotten also came flooding back.

It is a few years earlier. I have my new PS2 and a new copy of MGS2. And the controls are just FUCKED. The button configuration and what they do bare no relation to any other game I've ever played. Moving around is a janky, twitchy, affair and it's hard to judge cornering or even the basics of how my character relates to his environment. Alarms go off every ten seconds and I'm usually dead soon after; unless I manage to hide somewhere, and then death is given a short holiday.I probably persevered an hour or so before I just gave up.

Stop staring at me, you unplayable bastard.

The thing is - I had a friend who owned this game and I watched him play it. He'd put the time in and learnt the insane controls and had a great time.A couple of months go by. I play San Andreas, and XIII and MonkeyBall, but eventually the time comes -I have to sit down for a day and learn how to play this damn game.

And I do. I slowly get better. Hiding gets easier, pouncing on people something I slowly get more efficient at and then - at some point - I turn into a fucking ninja. Everything just clicks and becomes absolutely fluid.

Enter a new zone. Patrols above and below. Make an instant break for cover; if I get spotted on the way I know I can take out the unfortunate soul who spots me in a heartbeat and be on the next one before I need to blink.I got good at that game.

A few years later I'm sat there with my 360 controller in my hands, and I can't work the controls again. Klaxons everywhere. It'll take a few hours of learning before i can actually start having fun, and I just think to myself -"Screw this".I still have not replayed them.

If there's a mitigating factor, it's this - back in the olden days MGS2 sat atop of my PS2 and I knew it was a good game. It had also cost me proper money as new games on physical media were, back then, expensive as all hell, and I was also poor. So I made myself play it, eventually.Now? I've got 600 games on Steam. I haven't played most of those. I own even more - I have keys for games everywhere. And I've got Netflix and multi-channel TV.I got distractions, son.

Will I ever go back? I don't know. I go back to Deus Ex every couple of years, Half Life 2 and a few others, but ALL my gaming is PC based now (though it's still largely a sofa/console-type experience - there are good reasons for this and its the subject of an impending article).

An assessment of MGS5 surely depends on two things - how well does it stand up on its own? And how does it compare to the previous games (though I honestly think most people who play MGS5 won't have played one of the earlier titles).

An interesting place to start though, is with this question -Actually, what IS a Metal Gear Solid game?

And it was only by asking myself this question that I realised something that's actually pretty obvious. There's ONLY ONE MGS game. It's a game Kojima has been making on different hardware for 20 years. Some of its early key features, I suspect, wouldn't have been so prominent; stealth - always obviously always a core mechanic in these games - perhaps was lent on and taken to extremes because the technology at the time couldn't deliver the other things he wanted. The hardware and physics engines and AI weren't there at the beginning, so instead the early Metal Gears are as much stealth puzzles than anything else. But that wasn't where Kojima wanted to be - so every new game brought the next step toward the game he had in his head. Better AI, smoother controls, better physics, better combat - and that led us to the more-rounded, broader, gaming experience he was always trying to get to. He found telling his story in the early games in a "normal" manner impossible so he found other ways of doing it. That's why all the cell-phone calls. That's why all the mini-movies.

The first game is completely different in feel to everything that came after. The aesthetics and the sneaking are there, but It's incredibly rigid in its game-play and it has, strangely, the same kind of vibe to it as something like Another World. It can't be an open world with deft combat, so you get something else. If you're supposed to be stealthing and you get spotted - you're probably screwed. You don't have options. Which is fine, but while it's dressed up as a combat stealth game, it's actually a puzzle game with lots of crawling about. Try running about with a gun and taking enemies out in the traditional manner in that game and see how far you get.

Now you might say "Well, it's not supposed to be that kind of game", but just wait until we get to MGS3, and how - among other things - he largely ditches those cutscenes as soon as he can.

MGS2 again is all about stealth, timing, doing your research and being super tactical. You can't take on hoards of enemies but the combat is far more evolved, because time had moved on and new things were technically possible. It's here that we reach an interesting point - and where the accusations that persisted about Kojima (that he really wanted to be making Hollywood action films, but had chosen the arena of games to do it in), began. The hardware available to him allowed him to show all these amazing action-scenes, but wasn't good enough to allow the player to actually be part of them.

Things changed - incredibly on the same console, the PS2. The PS2 was actually still a huge seller for Sony in emerging markets, but MGS3 marked the end of the console as a force in gaming (popular yearly franchises and the like were still getting adapted/hobbled versions on PS2, but little else - no new AAA now).

MGS3 was a far different proposition to the earlier games, as for the first time Kojima got close to making the game he wanted to make - he kept the stealth elements but was, for the first time, able to push the hardware graphically and technically (the work put into the legendary MGS FOX graphics engine must have been unbelievable - playing MGS2 and 3 now on a PS2; they look like titles from different hardware generations) and this resulted in opening up the gameplay - running and gunning was now occasionally a valid and fun approach - if you knew what you were doing you could run at bunch of motherfuckers spraying bullets and throwing grenades and still be standing at the end of it. Of course, Kojima being Kojima, he had to throw in a stealth section the like of which none of the other games, or anything since, had ever seen. I'm mainly talking about the "The End".There are ways of negating this level and this challenge, but players in-front of their console at the time didn't know any of that.

We, us real gamers, didn't have any Youtube to tell us how to easily do things. What we had was was an invisible asshole ("The End") sitting in a tree somewhere who exploded our heads anytime we blinked. Get the microphone out, get an idea on where he was - sweet. Edge away and round; slowly.

Bang.

Fucking dead again.

Apparently - "read the title - the game play it is on very easy." So try this shit on hard. I dare you. (26 Apr 2009 - Uploaded by sargeantchallenger)

At the time I hated that level. In retrospect I admire the shit out of it. It took me hours. (I was not playing on easy). You want something casual and fun? There's Pokemon. This game, this one right here, is occasionally difficult as all HELL. You had to adjust and play the game on its' own terms, or you weren't getting any further. Unless you were playing on easy.

Also in MGS3 there was the introduction of CQC (hand-to-hand combat, basically) which you could play the whole game without using, so I didn't. I liked shooting people or knocking people out. Until the end, which you can't beat without being pretty proficient at it. I played that final boss fight so many fucking times.

You get that "keep playing until you actually get good" attitude in some indie titles still, but in AAA's? Nope. Publishers don't spend $60 million on a game that some 12yr olds can't finish, because those 12yr olds will screw your game by word of mouth ("ths gayme is two hard annd is brokin. DO KNOT BY!!!!!") and you'll go out of business. The challenge is still there; you just can't choose normal difficulty. Normal is the new easy. Normal is for children.MGS3 though; hell. Adapt or fuck off.

It's a section that's obviously echoed in MGS5 and your first meeting with Quiet. An amazing invisible sniper who repeatedly fills you with holes until you start thinking laterally. Though it's MGS3-lite in comparison.

MGS4 was a weird mish-mash of every gaming genre around, born of this being the tentpole release for the new PS3. In gameplay terms nothing has changed and there's nothing here that represented the challenges found in the earlier games. It looks beautiful and the movies are prettier than ever, but for the first time the gameplay hasn't evolved. Hell, the films don't need to be there anymore. Anything a cutscene could do you could have done in the game; the graphics and engine had evolved to that point. Instead - boring stalking of a target that only appears for one level but shows off the lighting effects? - check. On-rails vehicle based artillery shenanigans that look really good but are dull as hell? Check. It's, purposely, an easier game to play. Narratively and gameplay-wise it's a huge, choppy, mess. But everything is fucking beautiful and to this day I assume the technical demands of that game were Kojima's attempt to make the PS3's CELL processor burst into flames. Much of it seems like it's there to make demos out of. And this was Sony's big new game to help sell a new console - so I imagine there were some pressures on him.

I'm taking this picture for tactical reasons.

Weirdly, despite the endless possibilities of the new PS3, MGS4 isn't half the game MGS3 is; despite all the callbacks and returning characters. Also, after many of the freedoms of MGS3, 4 seems remarkably "on-the-rails"; a backward step. Kojima can't be blamed. Sony needed a game that would sell a console (though the Blu Ray player was probably most responsible for shifting units), and the pressure to deliver something that showed off everything the console was graphically capable of, and that normal people could easily pick up and play, must have been immense.

At least Meryl looks pretty.

So, up until this point what is the quintessential MSG experience?MSG3.Controlling Snake no longer feels like you're constantly fighting the game; moving around in general is an easier and slicker thing to do, and actual fighting a legitimate option; but all the while still largely sticking to its stealth roots. It was a more rounded experience now - you felt like you had options. An alarm going off didn't mean the place swarming with combatants (in place of actual AI) and instant death - you had more options in dealing with situations. It wasn't just the controls and what you could do with them that had opened up, the maps had too - it feels like a bigger, more polished, game in every way.

So...MGS5.As previously referenced - It's long been an argument of detractors that Kojima basically just always wanted to make movies, but had wrongly chosen the arena of gaming to do it in. These days it isn't an argument that holds up. Thousands of games are being released each year and our idea of what a game actually is is now being pushed around and changed pretty regularly.Kojima liked his games to have long sections of narrative. Big fucking deal. We have games now that consist of walking around wet islands while someone reads journal entries to us. We have games where a mountain sits there and occasionally talks to us. We have games where we can do things, but that lead to no reward. The entertainment isn't the destination, it's in the doing of the thing.I knew, certainly with 2,3 and 4 that I was sitting down for half movie and half videogame. I did not have a problem with that. I got the beers and the snacks in.

MGS5 doesn't do any of that. Instead a mix of previously unimaginable action set-pieces and a fuck-ton of decent AI that would have exploded a PS3 fill those gaps instead. It's not that Kojima couldn't have kept stopping the action for some 30 minute documentary about the illuminati or whatever - he just no longer has the need. Watch a film? You're IN the fucking film. You're voiced by Keifer Sutherland. There's a gigantic mech jumping over mountains trying to get to you and smash you into goo. This is a fucking movie, but this time you're actually directing the thing.

You're all getting Fulton-ed.--------------------------------------------Interlude - The Smashing Pumpkins once released a double-album called Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Yes, it's a shit title. It got ok reviews (just stay with me a minute, here). There are at least 10 fantastic songs on that thing. So, if they'd cut out all the shit, and just kept the good tunes it would - in my opinion - have gone down as one of the greatest albums of the decade. Billy Corgan screwed himself - he hid genius amongst shit.This opinion of mine, of that album, is not entirely unrelated to this appraisal of Metal Gear Solid 5.--------------------------------------------------

There's this, truly, great moment near the end of Chapter Two of MGS5. You've now got all these warzone kids on your base. They've got no lives to go back to and if you send them back their country they're just going to end up in gangs and war and death. So, you've decided to keep them - educate them, and one day they'll help you make the world a safer place. You're on the deck of a platform; the kids are running around and then the sun is blotted out, a huge shadow slides across everything. Helicopters have brought something in on tow ropes. We cut to the bottom of a cargo area where the choppers are parking this thing. A giant metal foot is swinging in the air just above the floor of the hold. It taps a tank that's already in there - the tank goes flying.

We cut to a long-shot, looking at the platform - and much of the base - from a distance. Towering over everything, everyone, is the product of a lot of time, money, research and effort. Towering there like an absolute behemoth - a Metal Gear.

The game should have ended there. You want to disarm the world, but you've got this death machine parked in the middle of your base. You're saving these children, and you have this death machine parked right in the middle of your base.

It was a fantastic moment, not just visually, but for what it meant. Where are your ideals and morals, really? Isn't there a weird disconnect between these two things and all your lofty ambitions, and then your possession of this thing. Or does the fact that it's a deterrent justify it being there?

"What an ending", I thought. "No easy answers, all questions".

And then Chapter 3 happened.

Chapter 3 is a cluster-fuck. Excuse the language, but it just is. You want to include these things in your game, Hideo? Fine, but make them a "special missions" section or something; bonus levels for progressing through the proper game. Some of the missions are exact copies of earlier ones, but now you have to do it in a different way. Some progress the story, but mostly don't. Some are just harder variations of things you've already done - like killing that Metal Gear again.

Why Chapter 3 exists in the form that it does is a complete mystery. And it just leaves you puzzled and confused and -

...Let down. Disappointed. So much that came before, and what you thought was the ending, was well-considered and thrilling and accomplished. And then you get given this bunch of random shit. There are a whole bunch of stories about Kojima and Konami - ranging from arguments about the direction the game was taking to rumours of all-out war between the two. The truth, I suspect, will never really be known - and I also wonder if the deterioration between creator and his publisher ended up with the final section of this game being such a mess. We can only guess.

I hope that's Konami's blood they're covered in.

Then there's Quiet. If you wanted to create an absolute firestorm on social-media and opinion pieces on the net and in the press then the presentation of Quiet could have been a scientifically developed way to provoke maximum exposure (is that a pun?).

Quiet was, by far, my most used companion. The cleavage I don't think was a problem - but the combination of that and being to see right up the crack of her ass? That was. I'm not a female gamer and I don't have a female gamer in the house. I have female friends who will have played this game but weirdly, I've just realised, we've not even discussed this subject (that's actually really strange - I'll need to change that).

The reason I mostly took her places with me was because she makes the game easier. She can take up position behind and above you - taking out enemies who suddenly appear out of tents, or whatever, that you weren't even aware of (which suited my "drive right into enemy camps and then just deal" approach down to the ground). When you're building your army you can send her to an outpost and by the time you've arrived by jeep she's tranquilized everyone there - leaving you to just Fulton-capture them. And then you can pick another place on the map and she'll go off and do it again.

During missions you barely (another pun?) see her - most of the scenes people have problems with happen when you're on the helicopter, and I'll admit I found them distracting and pretty sexual, at first. Because they are. But you spend literally hours on that chopper and you eventually get to a point where you, honestly, just don't see it anymore. This isn't an excuse, it's just that if you see the same things over and over they stop having the same effect on you.

For the record, despite Quiet apparently needing to be practically naked because her skin is screwed up and needs to breathe, you can put proper clothes on her in the later stages of the game. You can put fatigues on her - as if she was, you know, a proper soldier. And you know what? I did. I'd developed respect for her and, I know this sounds weird, I preferred her to be properly clothed. She was a fellow soldier and I owed her my life and it just seemed right.

And she didn't die.

We'd spent a lot of time, hours upon hours, taking out tank groups, outposts, fortresses - she'd saved my life countless times. She'd actually, somehow - despite the lack of talking - become an actual person to me. The looks she gives you - bored, playful, disappointed, sometimes downright motherly, go some way to fleshing out her character (I'm not even touching that one).

If I had a girlfriend who gamed, or I was older and had a daughter, I don't know how I'd feel about Quiet - but for me, playing for hours, it became a non-issue.

Yeah, yeah, I've seen them. Now do you mind? I'm trying to do some work.

With one exception. You can trigger a shower scene between the two of you (nothing sexual and you're both fully clothed) late-on in the game. While this happens a number of people - workers on the base, all men, surround you and hoot and holler at her - sexually turned on and celebrating how hot they think she, and the situation, is.

It's fucking horrible, I mean seriously unpleasant. As a gamer what exactly am I supposed to be getting out of this? You could say "don't complete the conditions that trigger that scene" - but you can trigger that scene without even knowing about it. There's nothing else like it in the game and I sincerely wish it wasn't there.

So, there are problems. But ignore the issues with Quiet and the travesty that is Chapter 3 and just focus on the actual game (which I don't consider Chapter 3 to be part of) and you're left with this -

MGS5 is a masterpiece. The game doesn't stop and show you a film of bad-guys doing things they physically wouldn't be capable of in the actual game. If there's a cut-scene it's there for a justifiable narrative reason. If you need to be fed important information it comes naturally over Comms while you're still playing the game. How you approach situations is limited only by your imagination, the options open to you truly staggering. Combat, set-pieces, just travelling around - all one seemless, beautiful, gameplay experience. And in a world. The openness of a Grand Theft Auto but with the polish of a dedicated AAA shooter - everything just rolling into each other effortlessly. There isn't anything else like it in games. It's remarkable.

And so fucking pretty. Stealth-killing a well dug-in platoon and driving to the next location as the sun comes up, knowing you can go anywhere - endless possibilities...

It's amazing. It just is.

Just pretend that last "Chapter" isn't there.

Jack Ince

]]>Review: Now that the dust's settled, just how good actually is Metal Gear Solid 5?Watch this: The Invitation (2015)FilmRandom Access MediaWed, 13 Dec 2017 23:00:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/4/16/watch-this-the-invitation-201556d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:5711ad2b40261dc8bade7be3Directed by Karyn Kusama, 2015 - Drafthouse Films, Cert 18. Available on various streaming services.

This review contains slight spoilers concerning the first half of the film.

"You're safe, OK?"

If you're the main character in a film and you're being told this in the middle of the film then you are either actually now safe from something, or just temporarily OK and things are going to get bad very soon. At the point when our character hears these words he doesn't know which it is and neither do we.

The evening doesn't start well. Invited by his ex-wife to a dinner-party of close friends Will, and his girlfriend Kira, are driving up into the hills where the people with money and nice houses live. He hasn't seen any of these people for two years and is feeling nervous and uncomfortable. We don't yet know why.

Suddenly, they hit a coyote. It's still alive but mortally wounded. Will steps up and deals with the situation with a tire-iron. Like I said - not the best start to an evening.

His ex-wife and her partner are living in the same house Will and she once shared. And suddenly being there, among a small group of people who were once very close, is deeply uncomfortable for him. And just keeps getting more so.

At first glance the obvious comparison is the recent Coherence (2013), another film set in one location, at a dinner party, where things just seem a little off. Imagined little paranoia's or something strange definitely going on, but being kept hidden, just out of view? They end up being very different films, though.

It's only a small spoiler, as it becomes apparent very early-on, to reveal that Will and his ex-wife, Eden, had once had a son together who died. Being back in that house soon starts having an effect on Will - everything reminding him of his dead child. Really, he isn't ready for this environment and these people and should get out. His discomfort levels are enhanced by how happy his ex-wife and lover, David, appear to be - he gets twitchier as time goes on, snapping at people - perceiving some people's behaviours as being peculiar.

Everyone, seemingly, thinks he needs to take a few minutes and calm himself down.

Then the happy couple in the nice house reveal why they've brought this group of old friends back together for this night - they met at a retreat in Mexico and have joined a movement that helps people deal with their grief and move on with purpose and happiness in their lives.

It sounds like a cult (actually called "The Invitation"), though they insist it isn't; but most of the other friends don't have a problem with that - taking the view that if it helps you get through your grief, well, it's got to be a positive thing.

Will, however, does have a problem with a few things. The slight remodeling of the house includes, nice-looking (but still), barred windows. David is always sure to lock all the doors to outside - there was a recent home-invasion nearby, he says. Will feels like he's being imprisoned.

The majority of the other friends also have a problem - with the video that David and Eden are so pleased to show them. It shows a woman in her 30's who has cancer; she's on her deathbed. There are a number of cult members in the room, the cult leader telling the dying woman she'll soon be at peace; that she'll soon be with people she has loved in the past and who have died - they are waiting in the afterlife for her. The woman finally breathes her last. The cult leader smiles, they all smile, and tells those gathered to feel her spirit; to breathe it in and feel the bliss of it.

It's disturbing as hell.

But is this David and Eden sharing something they see as a beautiful moment of final absolution - powerful and important and something they want to share with those close to them; part of a religion and belief system that has helped them recover from crippling pain, and they just have a really misplaced idea of how to present it to those who are new to it? Or is it something else?

Also, if it's supposed to be a healing night of old friends reconnecting why is this strange young woman here, Sadie? Apparently they met at the retreat in Mexico, but is now really the time for strangers? And why hasn't one of the invited old-friends shown up? And the surprise guest who suddenly appears, another cult member who has been invited because he happens to be in town, Pruitt; is that another thing to be worried about, or just one of those things that happens on the weekend when you're at dinner at someone's house?

That's the set-up; an emotionally frail man is in a situation and place he's not ready to deal with yet. And he's emotionally such a mess he doesn't, and we don't, know if he's projecting fears and anxieties onto the people around him, if something sinister is happening he can't quite understand, or a mixture of the two.

It sounds like I've discussed too much, given too much information, but that all only covers the opening act.

The acting, direction and production are all top-notch. The director Karyn Kusama's biggest film was the sci-fi, Charlize Theron starring, misfire Aeon Flux; though she's better known for the superior, earlier, Girlfight (2000). Here, she delivers on that earlier promise. It's a very accomplished, measured, piece of work.

More than that - if I'm watching a film and I feel the need to look at my watch, not because I'm bored, but because I'm beginning to freak out and I want to know how much more of this there's going to be

I've had misgivings about The Gifted. The fact I'm still watching 10 episodes into the season obviously means something. Largely, I think, it's down to the potential the show has, rather - unfortunately - than anything seriously spectacular or gripping actually happening. I'm waiting for it to take off and finally with this episode there were signs that it just might.

For the uninitiated; the story follows a family in the near future. Mutants have been blamed for a huge terrorist incident and are now hunted like animals and imprisoned. The family's two kids are discovered to be mutants and the whole family goes on the run, finally meeting up with the mutant underground and holing up in the local mutant HQ, a dilapidated crumbling mansion (obvious parallels with the shiny big building in the early X-Men films).

The Strucker family - on the run and, partly, superpowered.

The problems? The kids are far more interesting than the parents, as are all the mutant characters. The potential appeal of this dynamic is easy to see, you can understand why the writers saw the worth in the normal parents/extraordinary teens thing. It's a narrative that could be mined in all sorts of interesting ways, but hasn't resulted in anything too inspiring yet.A pattern had been threatening to settle in. Family members/other mutants get arrested by Sentinel Services (the branch of the government responcible for apprehending mutants - the name is also something of an injoke/reference to those who follow the bigger X-Men story) while they are on some mission to get supplies or rescue other unfortuates. Episode ends. Next episode they get rescued. And then we do it all again.There are also some mistreads that might really irk you - like the main character whose power is he can track and feel where people are. My problem? He's Native American. Hey! Let's make his super power be that he can track people across distances! Like they do in the old cowboy movies!It's so incredibly lazy. And he wears jewelry with feathers on it, you know, to make you really GET it. It's no coincidence that, so far at least, this guy barely feels like a character.

Also, we spend ALOT of time in the same building, so making the different areas look different (every thing is grey, dusty and cluttered) would go a long way. Two characters have their own bedroom. Put some colour and feeling into it. The family have their own area, make it feel like that. Visually this is not exactly arresting stuff.

But on to the better things. The female characters are puzzlingly more interesting and better written than their male counterparts. I don't know why this is, but they are and I'm glad. Whether it's the lone-wolf girl who can open portals to places miles aways, the seductress who breathes red smoke into her victims faces and can manipulate their memories, or the moody goth force-power girl who just wants to attack things all the time - they're all fun and you like being around them. Out of our main family unit it's the teenaged girl who is by far the most feisty. And fortuately they aren't in the background; we spend as much time with them as anyone.

Polaris - looking for a fight.

To be fair, I suppose, you have to at least recognise that it's a conjested time for decent superhero (and similar) shows to debut. At the start of the year Legion rocketed right out of the gate with each of its' episodes being something of a minor classic, and was constantly pushing at the boundaries of what we could expect from such a genre show (it's firmly in my top 10 TV shows of the year). American Gods similarly blindsided many people. The Defendors had its' critics, but also plenty of people who appreciate the fact that a slow-build leads to the best payoffs. Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D is in space now. And it's pretty damn good.DC have managed to create on TV what they can't do in film; a compelling universe where seperateshows and characters can nicely co-exist.We won't talk about The Punisher (at least not here). Or The Inhumans.

However. The sense that The Gifted has been under-performing can be blamed on itself. The occasional inspired moment has shown it can surprise and be genuinely inventive. Back in episode two things start with an awesome bang, as an uncontrolled portal - quickly shut down - results in the front of a speeding van on a road elsewhere bursting into the mutant headquarters. It was a surprise, deftly presented, and genuinely impressive. The first episode ends with a breathless and pretty intense chase sequence and an effective cliffhanger.

The frustration has been in not being able to see where the story might be going and instead us getting a fair bit of repetition. Captures, rescues, people having the same conversations over and over and LOTS of time spent in that one building. Too much. There's been mention of other places in the mutant network, and branching out into those could lead to needed changes in pace and feeling.

Then this episode happened, when it seems like the writers recognised the need to change the formula. A main character is probably dead, a genuine mutant terrorist incident, and a double-cross that you could see coming... but not the manner of it. S.H.E.I.L.D is a long-form TV show that often manages to end with a cliffhanger that leaves you with your eyes wide open and your mind racing. And finally The Gifted got one of its' own. A real gamechanger and new ground for this show.

Whether this signals the beginning of a new dawn remains to be seen, but for the moment this episode really helped to justify the time spent watching the season up to this point. Until now it has largely been coasting on the appeal of some well-crafted characters and performances. But now there are some strong indications that the story is trying to become worthy of having them.Here's hoping.

8/10

Chris Coates

]]>The Gifted - another superhero show; worth watching?Listen to this: The incomparable, Superheroes of BMX by MogwaiMusicJohn Peel made me buy itRandom Access MediaMon, 11 Dec 2017 21:27:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/5/23/listen-to-this-the-incomparable-superheroes-of-bmx-by-mogwai56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:574375dfb09f9544b592d93cSo, I was in my second year of university. It was something like 11pm on a weekday night and like students should be we were playing videogames. Most likely one of the later Quakes or Command and Conquers (because when we were on the LAN that's all we ever played). I was the only Arts student in the house and my three housemates were all taking Computer Studies, so they all had computers but not me. So, I'd usually sit around for a game to end and then I'd get a go. Don't pity me too much though; I had the only console in the house - my second-hand Mega Drive (bought with money that probably should have been spent on books); so if anyone wanted to do any brawling or platforming I was the boss. The time me and Mark somehow managed to beat Streets of Rage 2 was the high point of that year.

Anyhow, I'm sat up in Mark's room waiting for him to get killed, and we had the radio on. Of course it was John Peels’ show and it was mostly just background noise we weren't paying attention to. And then, a minute or two into the latest tune, I realise I'm listening to something… different. I ask Mark to turn the volume up and we just sat there listening to this extraordinary track.

It was mournful and beautiful and meditative and seductive; all these things and more, all at once. The next day we found ourselves in the city centre, found an indie record store and bought a copy each.

It's a track for certain times and places - if it's morning and you're looking for something to get you pumped up for the day ahead, please don't listen to this for the first time now. It's a tune for night-time. For thinking. For taking you somewhere else.

I suppose I'd better let you listen to it now.

The drums clip along softly. What sounds like a child's Bontempi organ slowly wheezes out its see-saw refrain, and then that mournful bass kicks in - a hint of sadness and longing and wanting to be somewhere or sometime else. Or is that just me self-projecting?

But then the guitars pile on - turbulence, feedback, trouble; but fought back by a sweet, tunefully picked, lead guitar melody. Pleasure and pain. Like looking back at a relationship that ended badly but that you remember with affection and regret.

Or maybe you’ll get something else from it. Maybe it's one of those tunes we invest ourselves in - everyone's experience being different. Give it a few listens; learn how it rises and falls. You may not appreciate it at first, but it may just grab ahold of you and never let go.

Jack Ince

]]>Listen to this: The incomparable, Superheroes of BMX by MogwaiSo, now the dust has settled: Just how good IS Star Wars: The Force Awakens?FilmOnce the dust has settledRandom Access MediaMon, 11 Dec 2017 10:02:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/5/19/star-wars-review56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:573e36abd210b87c46548518Director JJ Abrams - Produced by LucasArts / Bad Robot- Cert. 12ASome spoilers, but no discussion of the second-half of the film.

So, that music starts and the familiar off-gold lettering of the written prologue begins to reel up the screen and, frankly, if some of the hairs on your body aren't standing on end and vibrating then there must be something wrong with you. Even if this is your first Star Wars film the combination of that music and the way this film chooses to open lets you know that the distinct possibility of much adventure is ahead. The former rebels now have democracy - the New Republic; the remnants of The Empire have slowly reassembled and grown, now called The New Order (some seriously Nazi-like imagery occasionally being used - so still very much the bad guys then). In order to grow their ranks quickly their armies of Stormtroopers are no longer grown in cloning facilities and instead their soldiers are vetted and enlisted normal humans. After years of rebuilding they're finally ready for a significant offensive.

The trail of wordage disappears and we're left looking at that familiar star-field we always start these films with - holding on for a few seconds. How do you compete with a Star Destroyer roaring overhead as in the original?

You don't. The camera pans down and we see the black outline of a Star Destroyer. We can tell it's big but not how big - then part of the moon in the background is blotted out and it's bigger than we could have possibly imagined; it's obviously gigantic. We purposely do not get a proper look at it - our minds race. If you can't show the audience something more impressive than a Destroyer booming down the screen let them do the work for you; our imaginations go into overtime - just how powerful is that massive thing?

Shuttles depart, loaded with Stormtroopers. Below, a Rebel, Poe Dameron, collects some important information from an Alliance sympathiser. It's important and The New Order want it. The shuttles sweep down on the village and surge through the meager defences; once on the ground the Stormtroopers are given the order to massacre the villagers. The suddenness and matter of-fact nature of it all make this scene feel brutal, despite the lack of violent detail.

On his way to his X-Wing and escape, Poe's craft is destroyed - he realises he can't get away. The device he has just obtained with the important information on it he places in his droid, BB-8, who he tells to hide. He'll be back for him. BB-8 takes off. Poe, instead of just running away heads back to the centre of the village and manages to get a blaster shot off at Kylo Ren. Using the Force Kylo stops the energy blast in mid-air. We've never seen anything like it in these films; what else can he do? It just hangs there while Kylo assesses Poe and gives orders. It's a real showstopper. It's only at the end of the scene, when The New Order and their captive Poe leave does the blue fire hanging in the air suddenly bursts back into life and explodes on impact. Stormtroopers not being bred and brainwashed leads to a big problem for The New Order now. One trooper hasn't fired a shot. Back on the Destroyer he removes his helmet - he's shaking and sweating; murdering innocent people isn't what he signed up for. He wants out.

Meanwhile, on the planet below, Jakku, a young woman scavenges a crashed, long dead, Star Destroyer for parts she can sell for food.

Honestly, that's Rey. You can just about make out her fighting staff.

Obviously, this serves to impress upon us the size of these craft, but the main reason to show us all these downed vehicles is to remind us how they got there - to invoke memories of the earlier films; instantly it provokes a sense of history in us. It's clever.

Rey, it turns out is orphaned. She has vague memories of her family leaving years ago. She waits, convinced they'll come back for her one day; unwilling to accept that if that was going to happen, it already would have.

On the way back with the junk in a sled - she rides down sand-dunes and then pulls it behind her - Rey meets another scavenger kidnapping a droid. It's BB-8. He is sat atop some large creature, and has the droid in a net and is trying to subdue it. Expensive droids like this one belong to someone. This is theft. We're introduced to one of Rey's main characteristics - a clear sense of what is right and wrong. Some shouted threats and posturing see the would-be kidnapper off. Once free she gives the droid directions to the village. The droid, of course, starts following her - to her annoyance.

Above, on the Destroyer, Rylo has finished Force-torturing information out of Dameron. The information is a map to the legendary hero Luke Skywalker - last of the Jedi Knights, and now he knows that map is in a droid on the planet below.

Meanwhile that Stormtrooper still wants out. He needs a pilot. Dameron has just been left tethered to a torture-rack now that he's now no longer any use. He's a pilot, and the Trooper's only option, despite the fact this man has just been put through a prolonged period of agonising pain. They instantly bond out of a shared need for each other. Poe asks his name; Troopers don't have names and instead he reels off his code designation. It starts with the letter F and N. Poe gives him his new name - Finn.

Their escape should be tense and an anxious affair but instead is thrilling and fun with no sense that there is any danger of capture (to balance out the torture scene we've just watched). Finn holds a rifle to Poe and they just pose as a guard and his prisoner on their way somewhere under orders. They find their way to an empty TIE Fighter which they unfortunately quickly find is tethered to a re-fueling hose. While Poe keeps gunning the engines trying break free Finn is trying to figure out how to fire the cannons. Once he gets the hang of it he joyously starts obliterating TIE Fighters, random areas of the hanger-bay - anything in targeting range. They finally break free. They take out some of the weaponry on the outside of the Destroyer, but not enough. On their descent to the planet they get hit by cannon fire, and they plummet planet-wards, out of control.

Finn manages to eject and land safely on the desert planet; he frees himself from his parachute and can see smoke in the distance billowing from the crashed Fighter. He starts running. At the wreckage there no sign of Poe but his jacket is in there and Finn is still in his Stormtrooper gear - a change of clothing is very necessary. He ditches the armour and heads into town.

Meanwhile Rey's new robot companion is attracting unwanted attention. The scrap-dealer purposely gives her a low offer on the gear she's brought to sell and encourages her to sell the droid to him. The amount of food on offer is more than she's ever seen in one place before and there's a moment where she allows herself to dream - but it's never going to happen; she turns the offer down. That doesn't stop the dealer wanting that droid and he sends a couple of huge thugs after her to get it.

Finn finally makes it into town, in desperate need of water. No one's willing to help a stranger. Finally he spies a gigantic work-animal drinking from a pool of liquid. On his hands and knees he starts drinking fast - it's foul, but he needs liquid.

Suddenly, commotion amongst the stalls in the covered market. Rey has been lifted clear up in the air by one of the heavies while the other obtains BB-8. "Oi, get offa me!" shouts a suddenly very British sounding and unladylike Rey. Finn starts running with the idea of helping her, but he needn't have bothered. Rey breaks loose and sets about beating the two big idiots into the ground with her staff.

This is no princess in need of rescue.

Getting closer Finn recognises what must be Poe's droid, and approaches. BB-8 freaks out because Finn is wearing his masters' distinctive jacket and electrocutes Finn several times while Finn quickly tries to tell his story. They escaped the Destroyer, crashed and Poe's gone missing. Rey assumes Finn must be part of the Resistance for him to have done all that. Finn seizes upon this - yes, I definitely also work for the Resistance - as, let's face it it's easier right now than trying to explain the reality.

The New Order arrive again and start strafing the town from the air. Finn takes the lead and keeps grabbing Rey's hand as they run for cover which she repeatedly tells him to stop doing. Quite why he thinks it's best that he's the one out in front is a mystery, as it's clear which of the two is better in a fight.

They run for the Junker's shipyard. Rey makes a straight line for a decent-looking craft up in front of them. "What about this one?" says Finn gesturing off-screen at a nearer ship. "That one" shouts Rey "is junk", whereupon her chosen escape vehicle explodes in a huge ball of fire. They're stuck with the junk. The camera pans around and...

It is, of course, the Millennium Falcon.

Rey gets airbourne and Finn climbs into the blaster turret. What follows is a fantastic action scene. Finn manages to take a couple of TIE Fighters out during the pursuit; Rey using her familiarity with the area to her advantage to dodge and weave. Finn's turret takes a direct hit - the weaponry still works but it's jammed, locked in a forward position; they can't fight back. There's still a TIE Fighter on their tail and its' weapons are just fine.

I love scenes that use information previously given to us and then use it in intelligent, unexpected, and thoughtful ways. It could have just been a standard chase scene where Rey repeatedly dodges random objects and squeezes through suddenly appearing narrow gaps in mountains until her opponent just loses control and crashes. We see that sort of thing so many times. But no, not here. She heads for the dead Destroyer we first meet her in, a place she knows well - she knows this is a place she can get this ship through, the layout, and how they can use it to defeat their enemy. This is intelligent writing.

They make it to the exhaust port of the downed, massive, wreck and weave their way at full pelt through all the debris inside. They make their way up through the husk of the giant ship, TIE Fighter getting closer, and then shoot out through a giant hole in the hull booming skyward. Rey cuts the engines and the Falcon goes into freefall, Rey wrestling with the controls... and suddenly we and Finn understand what she's done. We can't move our weapons turret? We'll just position the whole ship so the enemy is in our crosshairs. Finn gets a lock and blasts the hell out of their pursuer and then Rey guns the engines just in time not to smash into the ground and they rocket away to safety. It's a fantastic scene.

While the Falcon roars away from Jakku Finn is sticking to his story of being Resistance and being able to get BB-8 to them, but he's running out of time and ideas fast. It's not a problem for long though, as the Falcon finds itself captured in a tractor-beam, pulled into a giant freighter and boarded. Finn and Rey hide under some floor panelling, but no one's going to remain hidden long on this ship - not from the owners of the thing; Han Solo and Chewy. They've been trying to find their old ship for years, but it's only now that it's out in open space that they've been able to track it.

Before we know it Solo's ship is boarded by not one, but two gangs whom he's double-crossed in some deal. So, business as usual then. Both are very unhappy (the second gang are lead by three of the lead actors of The Raid 2, which I loved) a fight breaks out and our five heroes escape in the Falcon. The gang leaders immediately report their sighting of the droid and the fact it's with Solo.

Finn's still sticking to his "I'm in the Resistance" story and getting away with it and Solo agrees to take them to where they need to be. Which means taking them to now General Leia Organa, who he hasn't seen in years. Once there, and after a brief reintroduction we're back down to business. BB-8's map is missing a vital piece. If they are to win this war, they need Luke Skywalker, and to find him means finding that piece...

It's fantastic seeing the old characters again and them being exactly as we'd expect them to be 30 years on from when we last saw them.

But It's a film that's basically a two hander between an unknown - Daisy Ridley is a fantastic in her role as Ray; and an almost unknown, John Boyaga (previously star of UK indie sci-fi horror, Attack the Block) who is an absolute revelation. His is the biggest story arc and most effective. He's a normal person who just wants to live normally but there's something in him that keeps pulling him back. He finds himself in situations he would have run from, but finally being on the right side and having a cause and people who care about him; it changes him. It makes some his actions toward the end of the film absolutely enthralling. The sense of someone overcoming true fear and still somehow managing to do the right things is rarely something we see done well - here it, and he, are utterly convincing. Poe and Ray are naturals to this, he isn’t, but he’s still there with them. That’s true heroism.You can't imagine anyone else in the role, it's the performance of the film, absolutely believable. He's already one of the great Star Wars characters, as is Rey. An unknown young actress and an almost equally unknown (to this audience) young black man starring in what will surely be one of the biggest films in history. And both of them knocking it out of the park, Everything about this film is fantastic.

If there's a deficiency, it's that Poe Dameron is pretty-much sidelined here. He's clearly going to be important going forward but doesn't get too much screentime in this episode. Expect him to feature more heavily in the next one.

A good adventure film needs a good villain, and this one has a great one. He's an inferior copy of what went before him, Vader (at least for now) - and he knows it. Immensely powerful already, some doubt remains in him as to whether he's chosen the right path - but more than that is a sense that he'll disappoint his adopted, dark-side, father figure (Snoke). Mix that with a combination of a lust more more power and a vicious streak that can break out at a seconds' notice and you have a dangerous Sith apprentice. Adam Driver conveys all of that, and a conflicting latent humanity, extremely convincingly. When the film needs him to burst into a fit of rage the film isn't afraid to show it; and you believe it. And the few moments that you're reminded that he's someone's son with actual feelings; you absolutely believe them too. The character, and Driver, had big boots to fill - if we don't feel threatened by him none of this works. But it's a nuanced well-crafted role and he does admirably with it; he's so unpredictable and wild there's a very real sense of danger about him. It's terrific.

Marvel have done wonders with some of their blockbusters. The Winter Soldier showed you could have a fantasy action flick that was intelligent, left the audience with moral questions and was genuinely thrilling ; Guardians of the Galaxy proved a fantastic script that deviated from normal conventions and took a whole bunch of risks could pay off spectacularly, but as much as I love those films (and I do) -

… They're not The Force Awakens. It's a Masterpiece. I don't use such a word lightly; if you do they lose their meaning. But as someone who has written scripts and can see the craft and appreciate the multiple, layered, achievements here, and then for them to be pretty-much realised and executed perfectly in the actual film - I can only give it it's due. It's fantastic. It's superior to A New Hope, easily. As for how it compares to Empire…It would take a year of me living in a cave on a mountain top considering nothing else for a full year to possibly answer that. Actually, some questions can't be answered. But this latest film in the series - incredible.

And think ahead for a moment and visualise Rey fully in control of her Force powers and launching a one woman attack on Rylo Ken and beating the hell out him. I want to see that. Badly.

I don't know where the next two films are going, but clearly they're in safe hands - they're being made by people who love and understand them and know how to make them.

It's a film for the ages - just like the originals and likely to be just as thrilling for those who don't know the series as well as those who do.

Not so long ago I did a review of Enki Bilal’s science fiction film Immortel (2004) during which I found some publicity for the film that claimed it was the first film to be entirely shot on a digital backlot - most scenes shot against nothing but a completely empty, enclosed, gigantic white or green coloured stage - with the effects/environments digitally added later.

It wasn't entirely successful - Bilal clearly intending some things to look entirely convincing and real and others to have a dreamlike quality. Also, the earlier Star Wars prequels used the same technique, though perhaps some hairs are being split and a tiny bit of Star Wars was shot on location. Who, really, cares.

What I do know is that Casshern (2004) was shot using the same technique in the same year and is a far more successful exercise in its execution and as a film.

The original trailer in Japanese. The English ones are all awful.

Casshern is based on a manga (comic) that became an anime in 1973, which was later followed in 1993 by an animated film; so it's a property that possibly has greater resonance for its native audience than those in the West, but lack of familiarity with it shouldn't hinder your enjoyment.

The plot is, frankly, too complicated to go into in much detail here but in broad terms a massive battle has raged for decades on an alternate Earth. The environment, as a result, has been hugely damaged and many people have become desperately ill because of it. Two competing scientists develop competing technologies designed to deal with the problem. One of them, Konami, believes he can manipulate certain cells within the body which will be capable of self-repair and instantly kill off all illness. The other man, Azuma, is working on, what some now see, as redundant research; armour that protects the wearer from the elements and also imbues the subject with great strength and agility.

The cell experiments are not a success. Multiple limbs and organs sit in huge vats of plasma - all dead, impossible to spark into life.

Later, Azuma’s son Tetsuya, is killed in battle. The body is brought home and taken to his father's lab.

The main fight sequence from the first half of the film.

Meanwhile that vat of dead limbs and organs? The lab is hit by a huge lightning bolt and the body pieces begin to merge into people - genetically superior people. It is ordered that they by executed; most of them are massacred but a few escape into the mountains. It's an area people don't go anymore, the conditions too harsh, but they find sanctuary - an abandoned castle once important to the war effort; and it's full of autonomous mechanised artillery. A small army perfect for exacting revenge. The leader of these new breed of humans calls himself Burai - and he declares war on mankind.

Meanwhile, in Azuma’s lab Tetsuya is temporarily resurrected, but he won't live long. His father, in desperation, puts the prototype armour on him. It holds him together, gives him mobility and much more; but he's cursed to never be able to take it off. Which is a problem when you have a love-interest.

Anyway, the Neo-Humans who want normal people dead and the guy in the battle armour aren't likely to agree with each other's moral stances - and that very much proves to be the case.

There's much more to the story; much of which doesn't hold to a traditional narrative and is heavy in symbolism and is far more nuanced and detailed than I can present in a short review. But if you're a fan of slightly surreal science fiction films that feature some stunning action sequences I can easily recommend this one

7.5/10

Chris Coates

All rights Shochiku Studios

]]>Review - Watch this: Casshern (2004): a sci-fi action film unlike anything else.Listen to this: The sublime, shimmering indie dream-pop of Slowdive - Shine (1991)MusicRandom Access MediaSat, 09 Dec 2017 10:01:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/5/21/records-john-peel-shine-by-slowdive56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:573e37687c65e44fad4a77b4Originally just a B-side for the single “Catch the Breeze” it's perhaps surprising that this song has an official accompanying music-video. It could be something to do with how later versions of the album did feature this and additional tracks and it was filmed then - intended to be re-released as a single in its' own right.

It's hard to tell. Slowdive never troubled the Top 40 with their singles and EP’s and only their first album, of three, found that level of success. In researching this brief article the search I did also, perhaps unsurprisingly, brought up a result for The Telescopes. We did an article on them and their song “You Set My Soul” recently and both songs do share an ethereal dream-like quality. They also both shared the same record label, Creation, which for a short time almost seemed to be the centre of the UK music scene.

The Telescopes partly failed to find significant success due to their constant changing of musical styles and influences, which were as changeable as the band's' lineup - situations that, they freely admitted, they brought upon themselves. Slowdive were more unfortunate in that they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Their debut EP was greeted rapturously by the indie music press. NME, Melody Maker and the like we're all over them with glowing reports of how this fantastic new band were going to be the next big thing.

It's weird how this video doesn't seem to have dated like it ought to have. It seems strangely outside of time.

Slowdive didn't change while they went away to record their new album, the music scene did - or rather the tastemakers, the music press, had changed direction. Shoegazing (a phrase I hate but was applied to this band and those not dissimilar to it - Cocteau Twins being another) pop had, to their mind, saturated the market and something new was needed. Which led to the rise of Brit-pop - Oasis, Blur, Pulp.

The album and the follow-ups were widely derided as being part of an old-fashioned, dull, passing musical fad. Listening to them now you just get a sense of a band slowly progressing and evolving their sound. It's not unusual to hear Slowdive being quoted as a major influence by current musical artists, and a passionate fanbase didn't forget them. A small band of London-based writers decided the music scene needed to change; but people didn't stop liking the music they liked listening to.

This isn't one of their most referenced songs, but it's the one that has the most effect on me. A glorious dream of a tune, an almost sensual experience that feels, for all the world, that it's washing over you with warmth. To listen to this song is to immediately be in a place of safety and absolute comfort - the hardships of life drop away and can't hang on; not while you're listening.

That's what I get from it, anyhow.

They reformed in 2014, the core group, and toured the world extensively. Just this month they announced they are working on a new album.

Welcome back, Slowdive.

Jack Ince.

All promotional material property of Slowdive.

]]>Listen to this: The sublime, shimmering indie dream-pop of Slowdive - Shine (1991)Anatomy of a fight-scene: The Raid 2 (2014)FilmRandom Access MediaThu, 07 Dec 2017 11:30:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/3/28/anatomy-of-a-fight-scene-the-raid-256d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:56f8a69220c647e52fdf47e8Director: Gareth Evans. Available in various regions through the Amazon Video streaming service and to buy on Blu-Ray.

While only one scene is being discussed at length and the ending of the film not mentioned, at all, other aspects of the film are referred to briefly and this review should still be considered spoiler heavy.

Among people who appreciate a decent fight-scene the original The Raid - made by Welshman Gareth Evans in Indonesia, his adopted country - seemed like mana from heaven for many. Others were more sniffy - claiming to have to seen more accomplished stuntwork and technique in the Jet Li and Jackie Chan films of the past. These things are, of course, subjective - but one can't help feeling that the old rose-tinted glasses, preferences for the things you loved in your youth, are somewhat in play.

Iko Uwais and his fellow casts' execution of - and ability to invent and amaze with - the Silat fighting style (and a number of others) doesn't seem to be any less impressive on film than any other. If we're talking cinematic presence perhaps we have a different argument - the raw animal energy of Bruce Lee or the liquid precision of early Jackie Chan - but that's what it is, a different argument.

The Raid quickly became known for three things. Firstly, what became known as "The Fight in the Hall", secondly the superb extended attack on the drugs factory which sees the combat and music slowly ramp up to a breath-taking, screaming, crescendo. Thirdly, it was released just several months before Dredd (2012) which shares the same basic conceit (police infiltrate a building full of violent thugs and then try to keep living when things go badly wrong). It's thought by some that The Raid dented Dredd's foreign box-office to some greater or lesser extent, despite them actually being pretty different films.

Alien (1979) has often been described as a "haunted house film set in space" and it's sequel Aliens (1986) as "a war movie".

In the same way Edwards has, wisely, decided to change the structure and mood of his sequel. The first is a highly accomplished action film with few pretensions - there's no fat on it; the only criticism of it can really be that perhaps it peaks too early. The final fight relies heavily on a man who should be half-dead suddenly being capable of amazing acrobatics and attacks - it doesn't quite sit right.

Taken as a whole though the film is a tremendous achievement.

If the theme of the first film is how power in the wrong hands can lead to horror, the theme of the second is that the pursuit of absolute power creates total monsters. It could be argued that not Rama - the hero, but Uko, is the main character of this film. A selfish prick slowly developing into a vicious excuse for a human being.

The Raid 2 is not an action film. It's a crime-thriller - rival bosses at each others throats, betrayals, sacrifices, political maneuvering - punctuated with mesmeric, superbly choreographed, action scenes . It's a much slower-paced affair. Struggles for power aren't rushed, the building of action scenes are as long as the action itself - everything is a slow-burn and then suddenly - havok. If comparisons have to be made then this could be considered a martial-arts equivalent to Heat (1995). We know Edwards can deliver an action scene, but in the meantime he's learnt the value of the tease - action builds slowly and deliberately before releasing into adrenaline fuelled, kinetic, mayhem.

In an early scene our hero is in prison. His mission - to keep Uco, the spoilt-idiot son of a crime-lord with plenty of enemies, Bangun, alive. Everyone is in the prison-yard. It's raining and all the inmates sit on benches in silent rows against the walls under bamboo awnings. There's no need to discuss the scene in detail here, but the build-up is superb; an assassination attempt that we, the audience, are aware of perhaps even before the hero. Rain thumps down in slow-motion, the whole yard one huge, deep, mud-pit. A prisoner keeps a nearby guard occupied with idle chit-chat, hand-signals flutter around the yard. Benny, apparently Ucos' bodyguard, is orchestrating things. This is new information to us, but he's been been bought-out by someone. A blade is finally produced and the attack launched. Three men cross the yard and deep mud with deadly purpose, in slow-motion, the rain hammering at them like fist-blows. Has catching onto the signs early meant our hero can manufacture a way out of this situation?

The build-up in that scene is superb and every bit as impressive as the descent into hell the scene quickly finds itself in.

As a developed character Iko Uwais WAS pretty much all the first film had time for. Here, he is necessarily pushed into the background for lengthy periods as the new force in town asserts itself and the selfish son, unworriedly, keeps taking him out on the town - using him as a substitute friend - lacking any real ones.

There are a number of standout action-scenes here - not least one largely fought by and in speeding vehicles, where a carefully timed-reload means life or death. Several times over. It plays almost like a ballet - as does the final fight scene.

This is all without mentioning "Baseball Bat Man" and "Hammer Girl", the latter launching a particularly vicious attack on a Japanese gang on a train, with hammers. These two characters jarred with me at first - "Hammer Girl" always sat around in her sunglasses - seemed like novelty Tarantino characters, but there are some brief intelligent moments toward the end of the film that lift them out of cheap characterisation and lend them a dimension of actual humanity.

It's actually an altercation with these two which slows our hero down in getting to his final target and both scenes roll directly into the other; we'll just concentrate on the second-part of this section of the film.

Edwards has largely, cleverly, kept his most vicious and capable villain in the background for most of the film. Referred to purely as The Assassin and played by Cecep Arif Rahman, his employer Bejo is the man who has swept in with this new breed of killers and all-but wiped out the former crime gangs. We've seen this diminutive man with intent, reptilian eyes, a number of times. Bejo's men like to drive victims into the country where a grave already waits. This fellow, immaculate looking in his tailored suit - an almost military outfit - lets the victims run in the fields amongst the tall reeds until shepherding them out. Next to their grave.

He has thematic purpose too, resolved in this final fight. Earlier in the film he kills another assassin. This other man is a victim of circumstance, he reluctantly kills because it's all he knows how to do in order to make money, but he manages to hold onto a glimmer of honour - he has a child to support. And he feels a measure of guilt at what he has become. Our Killer, Bejo's Killer, lets a mass of goons do all the dirty-work and when his quarry is cut to ribbons he delivers the killing blow. He is merciless and seems unstoppable, but he has no honour. He seems to like the thrill of murder.

Its your decision if you watch this before watching the film first.

The scene, when it comes, is almost serene at its open. Having managed to survive the corridor approach Rama pushes upon the doors at the end. We look out into a classy-looking kitchen attached to an expensive hotel. The room is full of chefs and food preparers - we sweep the room. No men with guns. The staff clear the room and there he stands; this smallish man with intent, rat-like, eyes - unassuming, standing near the far corner.

Quickly they assess each other as proficient in the same fighting style. They shuffle closer until they almost touch - one propelled by a desire to see justice finally prevail, the other devoid of all fear and certain of yet another kill.

A short burst of grabs, blocks and checks; two opponents sizing each other up. The Assassin allows a brief smile to flicker across his face, his eyes dart from his quarry's feet to his face. "Who are you to face me?" he seems to silently, amusedly, ask; toying with Rama.

The smile does not last long as the two men quickly show themselves to be closely matched. Every move blocked or followed by a blow, throw or kick that is the equal of the other.

The structure of this scene is masterful - it evolves and plays out like a dance - and yet there isn't a moment when you doubt that these men absolutely intend to kill the other. The fight begins with no music; it doesn't need it. Everything in the room a potential weapon, the environment - deadly in these hands - a third character. Rama smashes his opponents head into the gleaming metal chopping surface and propels him the length of the counter before grabbing a bottle and smashing it to pieces on his rivals' head.

Despite his early cockiness this Assassinsoon realises he can't win in a fair fight, as Rama's ceaseless inventiveness and intent are clearly unstoppable.

In an absolute show-stopper moment, so fast you can almost miss it, Rama launches a high kick - his whole body powering through the air - at his opponents' head. His attacker is staggered back against a wall, temporarily dazed, but he manages to dodge to the side. Rama's foot slams into the wall 5ft in the air - surely leaving himself to plunge to the floor and be open to attack. Instead, in a moment of breathless inventiveness, he pivots on that foot and smashes his other into his opponents' head. It's a moment of wonder, one that becomes no less impressive and spectacular the more you watch it.

The villain staggers back, as if hit by a truck, into a glass walled, temperature controlled, wine cellar in the corner of the room. Rama charges him. The glass wall shatters. He clatters to the floor, bleeding more and more. More and more aware of his weaknesses. Rama is relentless; the other man attempts to get up but Rama plows into him again; smashing him into the back wall. More wine bottles racked up and now destroyed, more glass, more and more cuts. And finally, for good measure, Rama puts him crashing out through the remaining glass wall.

The Assassin has reached a point where he is no longer willing to entertain anything like a fair fight. He reaches to the knives holstered in the small of his back. Rama comes forward again, and the man so recently assured of his invincibility lunges forward and carves a deep wound into the back of Rama's knee. The air of superiority is gone; desperation and viciousness are what is left.

Rama tries to move - he's not hobbled but surely seriously wounded. He grimaces and slips a little from his crouched position on the floor, his hand flies to the back of his slashed leg. Across from him, similarly crouched, injured to a similar extent - though in different ways - is a murderer full of venom.

The fight stops, temporarily. Rama feeling his leg - knowing this could be a turning of the tables.

This break is extraordinary. The Assassin, face smothered in blood, positively seethes hatred - a hatred that barely seems to be contained by his body; it radiates from him. The camera barely moves but you expect it to almost start vibrating; his whole body taught - every muscle clenched, a look of absolute hatred and desire to destroy so potent and convincing this reviewer has never before witnessed the like.

Before we go any further, it's important to consider the camerawork in this scene - it is an unbelievably choreographed ballet between not two performers but three. The camera sweeps around the combatants, weaves between them; fists and feet fly and stop millimeters in-front of the lens - the action sometimes sucking us in and other times pushing us quickly out. I have no idea how many cameras and lenses were damaged and replaced during the filming of this one scene, but the fact this scene exists in the way it does means much hardware got broken. It was worth it.

The fight started on equal footing, the more clever and accomplished Rama slowly getting the upper-hand before nearly finally asserting total control. He bested his opponent. But the real combat starts now as does, coincidentally, the music. All of that thrilling action, largely unparalleled stunt-work, and not a note of Hollywood-type musical bombast. Just mesmeric movement.

What follows is spellbinding.

The Assassin comes at Rama and the music begins, but it's not what you expect. Instead what we get only adds to the sense of wonder and the feeling that we're watching some extraordinary. A slow throbbing bass beat simmers and jags along unrelentingly below while an almost medative sounding synth slowly cries and pulses - dreamlike, mournfully, along with it.

It lends the scene a peculiar feeling; one of inevitability. This is a dance, and this is the music that goes with it. And dances come to an end.

Rama recognises that his only way of getting back into this fight is to somehow wrestle one of those two curved blades away from his opponent, and pretty much every effort is now spent on trying to pry one away from his furious enemy.

The music slowly ramps up and becomes more urgent as the action does. Despite his wounds Rama keeps mostly avoiding those slashing blades - weapons that were introduced to bring an end to the fight are constantly parried, constantly almost stolen away. Until the inevitable finally happens - some quick movement, a twist of a wrist and a weapon falls free from it's owners' grasp.

Rama was holding his own against a man proficient with two weapons. Now he has one of them. This fight in far from over, but the result can be in no doubt.

For someone who appreciates the artistry of not just stunt-work, but actual martial-arts, this film constantly hits buttons that other films don't even know exist. Hollywood actors don't have the necessary skills for this sort of work - but if a good action director, editor and stunt-team attempted it, there would have been the first section of the fight - with fists - then the break in action - then the section with the knives and we'd carry-on at breakneck speed until the hero eventually delivered his deathblows.

Not here.

Fighting is tiring. You don't often see that in films. Action-films typically demand more energy from their action-scenes as they develop; they feel the need to get faster and more breathless. One of the reasons a fight from the recent Daredevil TV show (S01E02 - The Cutman) was so lauded is because it recognised that when people get punched, they tend to get up again. And the more people kick and punch, the more tired they get.

The physical dynamics of this scene play out like an actual, 5-round, MMA fight. There are only so many flying kicks, throws, punches to the head (and glass and knife-wounds, here) a person can take before they start getting exhausted. And so we find ourselves seeing something we rarely see in films - progressing intimacy. Roundhouse kicks aren't in the locker anymore, no big haymakers are being thrown. Now it's short jabs, headbutts and clinches as each man now has to resort to smaller movements and smothering the other man's attacks. Inside dirty-boxing. Occasionally a knife finds its target and the striker moves away so he can slash and rip. Desperation and the recognition of an opening lead to the odd lunge here and there - a blade swings wide, strikes, blood sprays.

We know though, and The Assassin knows, this is only going one way. The more efficient dodging, the more exacting attacks, have brought us to a point of unavoidable resolution. Our once-cocky, laughing, demon of a killer lunges forward with his knife hand. In a split-second Rama has his wrist in his grasp and with his other hand, his knife hand, slashes up and down the other mans' arm, burning through a reserve of energy that sees blood shooting out of his opponents arm every which way.

The final death-blow is as violent as you'd expect; but lacking in triumphalism. Instead, it's muted and, in a way, unexpectedly fitting. Rama plunges his blade into his opponents throat, twists, and rips it out. The Assassin is pulled forward by the retreating, slicing, knife. He bleeds out, his body-weight leaning forward propping him up against Rama, his head on Rama's shoulder, in a weird almost-embrace. His blade slips slowly from his hand. We look to Rama's face and see almost nothing; perhaps some regret at taking a life, but mostly he's not even able to process the situation. They stand there for a while - an intimacy (that word, again) that seems strangely correct.

The Assassin slowly begins to slump and finally his body crumples to the floor.

One of the greatest action-scenes ever filmed has come to an end.

Chris Coates

Images property of Entertainment One

]]>Anatomy of a fight-scene: The Raid 2 (2014)Review: Cyborg (1989) - Van Damme at his best. And its'... TWO SEQUELS? WTF?!FilmRandom Access MediaThu, 07 Dec 2017 02:54:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/4/13/cyborg56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:570dd7ff01dbaea758958c20Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Cyborg. The occasional guy will pick Black Eagle in an effort to impress us with his knowledge of cheap and awful 80's action films. Which is Van Damme's most entertaining film? Sure, most people would go for the obvious Universal Soldier or Hard Target - bigger budgets, better productions - but for sheer entertainment value? This one.

And I love it for the crazy story behind it and it's director as much as anything else.

I like how genuinely nasty it is, too.

It's the future. A Plague has ravaged humanity and life is hard. Van Damme is a nice guy living in the countryside in a farmhouse with his surrogate family. The bad guys come along, tie them together with barbed wire and throw them down a well because you know, they're bad guys. When he manages to crawl out - wife and young son dead - he recuperates and he goes looking for revenge against this asshole and his gang of vicious thugs, as you would. And to make things worse they take the daughter with them - who is about 10 years old. Let's not even think about that.

Well they certainly look like they mean business. In an early Duran Duran video. Burn!

A few years pass.

The Cyborg in question isn't the man himself; it's a woman he later has to protect. A group of scientists have implanted information in her that will somehow lead to the world being less-fucked up. There's a plague - this will lead to a cure. He has to get her across the country to a facility where they'll be able to use this information. On their way - guess who they keep bumping into?

They later beat the hell out of him and then they crucify him. If you're making a post-apocalyptic revenge action film you'd better make it nasty; otherwise what's the damme point? (do you see what I did there?).

They don't nail his feet though, so despite being immolated on a post the thickness of a telephone-pole, his repeated back-kicks - over the time of hours and hours - break that post in two. He is the ultimate freaking machine.

This is a picture of when Jean-Claude has been crucified.

In a demonstration of just how impressive the young Van Damme actuallywas a bad guy comes looking for him down in a sewer system he's managed to escape into - fleeing from the gang. Where's he gone? The guy trailing him is massive and with a knife so large it's bordering on being a sword. We cut between Van Damme and his hunter a couple of times. Van Damme is lit by a shaft of light coming from somewhere - the bad guy moving forward is in comparative darkness. Van Damme lifts his knife, double-handed above his head ready to attack. Why the hell can't this guy see him? The camera cuts to a wide shot and he's there - doing the freaking splits high in the air - each foot planted firmly on the opposite wall with nothing to support him but his own body strength. It's a practical effect - he's actually doing it. And then he drops on the villain and it's lights out for him. I was 13 years old when I saw this film for the first time. It blew my mind.

The story behind the film is just as good. It concerns Cannon Films (any fans of RedLetterMedia will have just gone on high-alert - go to Youtube to see their love for this production company).

The Cannon Group at this point were owned by Golan and Globus, two cousins. They had plowed a ton of money into Masters of the Universe (1987) - that's right, the He-Man movie starring Dolph Lundgrun and a very young Courteney Cox. It bombed big. If you're going to bomb, that's the way to do it.

They'd already gone into production on the sequel and spent $2 million on sets and costumes for it and a proposed Spiderman film - so they used that stuff for this film instead. Which is why some of the production looks so weirdly good and why some of it looks like the film was just shot in a field somewhere. Particularly the ending and the beginning - they look fantastic; like a proper film.

Cannon had lined up a guy calledAlbert Pyun (really deserving of an article of his own, he's legitimately fascinating) to make both films back-to-back - he had a reputation as someone who worked fast and cheap. He wrote the script for this in two days and shot it for $500,000 in three weeks.

And I love it. However, I realise that despite this, sequels to this film really shouldn't exist. It was made cheaply to recoup losses and make some cash back, mainly on the rental market. It wasn't a big hit (though its' cost to profit is pretty impressive - apparently making around $10 million). And the sequels... they kind of exist and kind of don't.

Albert Pyun has nothing to do with the sequels, so automatically our interest levels should be dropping. Ditto, Van Damme who quickly found himself flirting with actual proper stardom. Cannon wanted to keep Damme sweet and regularly appearing in their films, so they gave him final edit. Pyun got kicked from the edit room. More about this later. It's a long weird story.

"Cyborg 2 Trailer 1993 Director: Michael Schroeder Official Content From Trimark The head of a chemical company plots to use explosive-laden cyborgs to kill off his competition."

I was going to put some of the artwork for the next film in here, but the original stuff isn't too great and the later re-packaging really focuses on the pneumatic attributes of the young Ms Jolie to a borderline perverted degree.

Cyborg 2 - Glass Shadow has literally nothing to do with the first film (there is one flashback shoe-horned in there for no reason), except the extent of the budget and the fact that it's sci-fi with cyborgs in it. Did Cyborg (it's achieved some cult status now, but then...?) have enough name recognition to entice an audience to a supposed sequel? Apparently so.

But get this; it stars Elias Koteas, Angelina Jolie, Billy Drago, and Jack Palance. Koteas and Jolie were unknowns, and Drago and Palance no-doubt did literally one day on set each, but still - that's a pretty good cast.

It's a pretty boring film (make that unforgivably boring), with much of the action set in a facility made up of small rooms and cement walled corridors. It's the future again. There's a conspiracy - corporations into robotics trying to kill off their competition. There's quite a bit of practice fighting in a dojo. Some talking. A scrapyard explodes at the end for some reason. It's notable for being Jolie's first starring lead in a film and how insanely young she looks and how icky her on-screen relationship with the older Koteas is. It is not a good film.

See, small-room dojo fighting.

So, some idiots rented this crap and it made some money because then Cyborg 3: The Recycler happened. It has Malcolm McDowell in it (but he went through a period of 10 years where he was in every film made, so this means nothing) and Zach Galligan, who at least people had heard of (Gremlins, kids).

And you know something - it's not that bad. For a few minutes.

Now, in the last few years the packaging for this film has improved to make it look exciting and dynamic, but I thought you deserved to see the original DVD cover.

The DVD cover insists Malcolm McDowell is the star of this, but he's in the film for about 4 minutes in total. I'm tempted to put a stopwatch on it.

The dialogue and initial setup seem promising. Humans and Cyborgs have lived together in harmony for 200 years, then there was some sort of catastrophe and now cyborgs who don't belong to anyone are hunted down by people like The Recycler, who chop them up and sell them for spare parts.

He captures one such cyborg and then gives McDowell a call, who's a buyer of such stuff. Malcolm's got a robot hand and he's having a manicure while sunning himself at some outpost/town - flanked by a couple of bodyguards. McDowell is a little terse, as the last time they dealt with each other the cyborg body he bought turned out to be a "glass shadow" and later exploded (a neat little reference to the previous film, I thought).

The deal gets tense, quickly. McDowell seems to be having a lot of fun - he's really chewing the scenery and the dialogue is pretty good. There's a brief altercation and then The Recycler kills him. And that's the end of McDowell.

I was kind of pissed. But then this happens.

Right after he kills McDowell The Recycler walks right into the nearby bar and pours himself a drink from a tap. It's white. Is it milk? It looks like milk and I'm pretty sure that it is milk. Did this film just kill Malcom McDowell and then make a Clockwork Orange reference? I'm not sure, but I think it might have done.

I think I've just discovered a forgotten minor sci-fi masterpiece.

And then it all goes wrong.

Richard Lynch (good value performance, lots of fun) as The Recycler starts hunting a rare, pregnant, cyborg who's worth much money. She runs off into the wastelands and finds a group of cyborgs who also fled society. A helpful human genius engineer (Galligan) fixes them all up and they wait for Lynch to show up with his expanded hunting party.

Each new actor we meet gets worse, there are some horrible speeches about how cyborgs are people too, and the music is terrible.

At least there's quite a bit of practical effects-work going on. Explosions, a beheading, guns everywhere - I appreciated the effort but I was past caring at this point.

I won't blow the ending. Get some friends round for beers and watch the lot. You'll have a bunch of laughs.

Now, while researching this story more and more interesting information just kept coming up about the films and the film-makers. So much so that I find myself, surprisingly, writing that we're not done with this yet. It's a real deep dive into independent, cult, cinema and there's too much of it for just this one article - so, there will be an unexpected sequel. And it goes some crazy, weird, places.

Coming soon.

Chris Coates

]]>Review: Cyborg (1989) - Van Damme at his best. And its'... TWO SEQUELS? WTF?!Guinea Pig 2 (1985): The "snuff" film that made Charlie Sheen call the copsFilmRandom Access MediaWed, 06 Dec 2017 10:00:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/5/20/guinea-pig-256d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:573f4352c6fc080b23858923There are no pictures of gore or violence in this article.

It was a very twitchy time, the late 80's/early 90's. Everyone was, of course, on a permanent diet of cocaine and the people of America were ceaselessly taking potshots with their firearms at various people and creatures (some real, some imagined) that were stalking them and needed to be taught a damn lesson.

It's important that you understand this background and environment, because otherwise you may think Charlie Sheen, and his reaction to a copy of a film he was given by a friend in 1991, was strange behaviour and that of someone not mentally well-balanced. But no, it was perfectly in keeping with the normal behaviour of the time. Convinced he'd just watched a recording of a real-life homicide Charlie Sheen called the FBI to report it, just like any of us would have done.

When people talk about the Guinea Pig films they, even if they don't know it, invariably mean this one. It's the most convincing and well-rendered of the series. Seven were produced quite close together by different writers and directors, with a cash-in version that has nothing to do with the originals coming a few years later.

The basic premise is always the same. A woman is either kidnapped or at least under the control of a man who, over the course of 45 minutes or so, usually dismembers her. Some went the fantastical route - a man discovers an ill, stranded, mermaid who he takes home. He uses the ooze from her weeping sores to paint a picture of her; she eventually dies. In another a man has an ill sister and he hacks other women apart in order to get the pieces he needs to "fix" her. Another is basically a comedy making fun of the other films.

The DVD including a "making of" documentary to show people none of it was real.

Flower of Flesh and Bone is the standout because some of the effects look so convincing. A man dressed somewhat like a Samurai gives a kidnapped and tied down girl an injection that is supposed to turn pleasure into pain. The abduction - a man with a camera following a woman down a dark street at night - is far too well filmed to be real. It just doesn't feel real at all. But is was a different time. People were less used to seeing this kind of thing, and they were all high as kites. That's got to be taken into consideration.

So, the dissection itself takes about 40 minutes or so - some of the effects are very good, some laughable and obviously rubber. Occasionally the Samurai will address the camera directly - announcing the next part of the ceremony and some of these sections are just laugh-out loud funny. He looks like he's having a hard time keeping a straight face.

Gore has no effect on me these days; horror has to be psychological to get under my skin, but this stuff is still deeply unpleasant (many, many people will not be able to sit through it) - so why watch it?

Because I wanted to see if there was any point to it. And there is. It's peculiar, but at the end of the dismemberment the reason for all this becomes clear and this man arranges the pieces of bone and muscle and gristle in displays that are - strangely, weirdly - beautiful. Like incredibly well-rendered floral arrangements. It's hard to explain, but you appreciate that something beautiful has come out of something so horrific.

Stop looking at me like that.

"Look other people have strange hobbies, why can't you just let me have mine?"

The FBI conducted a brief investigation, that certainly wasn't a waste of their time, and quickly came to the conclusion - upon being shown the "making of" footage - that there wasn't a case. And then everyone went back to launching attacks on random people and objects with their Glocks and sawn-off shotguns.

But what if it HAD been real? Thanks for looking out for us, Charlie.

Chris Coates

]]>Guinea Pig 2 (1985): The "snuff" film that made Charlie Sheen call the copsHow the original Star Wars and The Force Awakens were rescued from being car-crashes.FilmRandom Access MediaTue, 05 Dec 2017 18:04:00 +0000http://www.randomaccessmedia.co.uk/www/2016/5/6/the-great-star-wars-rescue56d654061d07c02d04d7b49e:56d658f245bf21b64ca6a6f6:572cae2837013bcf0a1ef12bDid you have worries going into The Force Awakens? I had worries. Fortunately not “Oh hell, George Lucas has been allowed to make another one” worries (in which case, frankly, I would not have been at the cinema) but some well-founded ones all the same.

JJ Abram’s two films going into this were also giant sci-fi franchise movies; Star Trek. The first one is mainly a success, because the thrilling moments manage to outweigh the stupid ones (Spock throws Kirk off the ship onto a random planet where not only does he happens to magically meet Old-Spock, but also Scotty - a genius engineer who possesses the knowledge of how to make spaceships go really fast - something no one else has ever figured out how to do and should be impossible. You know, so Kirk can catch up to the Enterprise. All of that could happen, sure). It was no surprise that the geniuses who write the Transformers flicks had a hand in the scripts. Don't even get me started on the second one - it's truly horrible and much of it doesn't make any damn sense. I'm convinced it's actually a video-art installation that belongs in The Tate Modern art gallery; the wrong package was picked up from a video-processing lab and then thousands of copies made and mistakenly sent out to cinemas round the world. It still made a ton of money, so there was no need to correct the mistake. Admittedly, Abram’s didn't write the things but he was in charge of them. He couldn't see that the script for the second one was a horrible mess?

Spock gets into a long boring fist-fight that completely that has no respect for the character or audience. Written by the Transformers dudes.

So yes, I had concerns.

So, you're in charge of the new Star Wars film - what do you do? First you work out what people love. They love actual characters who have actual, natural, personalities. They like snappy dialogue. They like practical effects and the films to be filmed in real locations; because that way you get a sense that these things could actually exist (George's prequels were entirely shot on blank-walled digital backlots, with the environments and many characters painted in later; no wonder every actors’ performance is so wooden, they had no sense of place or anything to ground themselves in).

They don't like their science fiction, escapist, action films to primarily be about intergalactic trade agreements. Well I don't, anyway. And horrible dialogue - they're not so keen on that, or a “hero” they'd rather see dead than have to watch for more than five minutes. Also, annoying, vaguely racist sidekicks aren't going to fly well.

Interesting fact - George Lucas shot all the live footage for those prequel films in 1080p, convinced we'd reached the pinnacle of visual technology. So watching them at home on a big 4k HD in the future will be like watching a betamax videotape that's been sat at the bottom of a lake for 30 years. Meanwhile the original films that introduced us to Han, Leia, Luke and the rest? Shot on 35mm film. You can make insanely good high-definition quality copies with that. With some remastering the originals are going to look amazing for years.

It's been said of the original Star Wars that it was a film that was made in the editing room. Famously the cast and crew thought it was a going to be a massive bomb. It's true. It's always had a brisk, knockabout, quality to it that was part of its charm but the feeling a classic was rescued from being a massive car-crash by inventive editing and presentation is enhanced by the fact that I've seen the Silver-Screen edition. A bunch of fans purchased an original 35mm copy of the movie that was sent out to cinemas and drive-ins back in 1977 and cleaned it up. It's not the version most of us grew up watching on TV, video, DVD and Blu-ray. Many scenes aren't framed particularly well and are unengaging wide shots (lots of them), the camera often captures props to the sides of the picture that are cheap and unconvincing, the lighting goes from being decent to being occasionally poor (and it's nothing to do with the quality of the film print). The experience is often not unlike watching a cheap Italian ripoff made a year later, after the proper Hollywood version had come out. George Lucas shot lots of footage and the people around him managed to assemble something decent out of it.

I can't use images from the "Silver-Screen Edition" for legal reasons, but many set props like the coloured control-panels featured in the background of this scene are more prominent and bright in the original version and look very cheap. This particular scene has been darkened and that area looks like it might have even been also blurred to hide the problem. The lights in the panelling above it are not blurred.

It was a big hit and sold lots of toys, but there's been lots of films down the years that managed to briefly connect with the zeitgeist be big hits and sell lots of toys. The reason Star Wars endured was the emergency rescue work performed on it before and after cinema release and a realisation that the sequels needed to be handled differently.

And then after the cinema release they recut it; reframed much of it. Wide shots of conversations that were dull and static were made closeups with snappy editing between characters so you could actually see expressions of peoples faces and the like; they colour-corrected scenes to hide cheap sets, brightened others so you could see what was happening better, sharpened things up. After the cinema release an insane amount of work went into making it look and feel better. A ridiculous amount of work. And it is this reworked version that we all know so well, not the original cinema version. The original held up in 1977 because it was something different and fun, but it would have dated terribly and fast if all that reworking hadn't happened.

It's telling that he doesn't direct the sequels; he gets people in who know and love what they're doing. As a result - The Empire Strikes Back. Fantastic. George keeps his hands off the franchise until he decides not enough toys are being sold and he forces a bunch of Ewoks into Return of the Jedi.

George leaves Empire and Jedi alone with the exception of these things. Because kid's will buy them, apparently.

Then he later takes full control and we get three films of complete drek.

Mostly what people want from Star Wars is for George Lucas not to be involved. And he isn't now, so we're already onto a winner there.

Now, you may wonder why you had to read all of that. Star Wars as a franchise was rescued because Lucas was surrounded by people who actually knew what they were doing. The two original sequels are far more polished experiences because he barely had anything to do with them (Ewok’s aside). The Force Awakens credits roll. Lead writer? LawrencefreakingKasdan - writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Number one priority of rebooting Star Wars? Get the guy in who knows how to write the damn things.

So, what do we get in the new film? We get a mixture of what we already know - much of the film is basically a retread of the original. And the rest? Some incredibly brave decisions that pay off spectacularly well.

Next up, a review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Chris Coates

]]>How the original Star Wars and The Force Awakens were rescued from being car-crashes.